


Witchcraft Celebrates

by eheyeh



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Slow Burn, The slowest, but thats plenty, but worth it, hopefully, just canon level, tw: child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2018-12-20 20:34:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 41,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11928768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eheyeh/pseuds/eheyeh
Summary: A slow burn, assholes-to-friends-to-lovers au, featuring cameos of Gansey being Gansey, but mainly about Adam and Ronan. Well, to be honest, mainly about Adam. But that makes it about Ronan. Or maybe it's the other way around. There are feelings and bad music and boys throwing things. Also pie.





	1. Is this a dagger which I see before me / The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.

**Author's Note:**

> Nature seems dead  
> And wicked dreams abuse  
> The curtain'd sleep;  
> Witchcraft celebrates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three times Ronan starts a conversaion with "fuck," and one time he- fuck it, he also fucking starts it with fuck. So fuck you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phones as daggers; boys like blades. The desperately confusing urge to clutch, where fighting is the only way they know to hold on.

_ Squash 1 _

“Fuck that. Why?” Ronan didn't lift his gaze from Adam’s for a second.  

“Drop it, Lynch,” Adam said dangerously.  

“No. Because you're a fucking rational person, Parrish. So, I'm not dropping it until you give me a fucking rational explanation.” 

“Ronan,” Gansey interrupted, uncertain.  

Adam’s fury was briefly cooled by the feeling he always got when Gansey looked uncertain.  

The idea that Gansey could be uncertain was maybe more shocking than anything else. More than the impossible fact of their friendship. More than Adam’s new parallel-universe life in which he had friends in Aglionby, friends who seemed oddly unconcerned by the gulfs that separated them.  

Adam thought about it, as the feeling touched him. Hope. Gansey’s uncertainty triggered a sense of hope in him. It was a conditioned response at this point.  

Unfortunately, so was his fury when his friends tried to give him something. Which quickly snapped him back to the situation at hand.  

“Well, you're a fucking asshole, Lynch, so I'm not going to explain myself until you back the fuck down.” 

Ronan just pushed the phone on the table closer to Adam. Adam actually moved back half an inch, as if the mere proximity of the offending gadget could burn him. 

“Your phone is a piece of shit that finally bit it.” Ronan started laying out the evidence again, taunting Adam. “Gansey is an old man who worries when his kids don't call. You would need a time turner to find enough working hours to buy a new one. I have an extra fucking phone. The only  _logical_  inference that can be drawn is that you should fucking take the fucking phone and stop being such an asshole about it.” 

Ronan honestly wasn't sure why this was such a big deal to him. And the irony of him trying to force someone else to take a phone, a device he loathed almost as much as school, wasn't entirely lost on him. But he couldn't let it go. He couldn't stop Adam from getting under his skin, even though he couldn't understand why he cared that much.

He didn't fucking care. He really didn't.  He was just... angry. Yes. Anger was a feeling he could accept in himself. He held on to it. This intense thing he felt about Adam was anger.

It pissed him off that Adam made everything so fucking uncomfortable when it didn't have to be. No one gave a shit about the fact that Adam had no money, except Adam. In fact, the only actual problem with Adam having no money was that Adam was so fucking uptight and stubborn about every little fucking thing. He wouldn't even eat the fucking pizza sitting on the goddamn table unless he had money to pay for it, which made no goddamn sense because no one else was paying Gansey back for it. Seriously. What the fuck? If Adam was ashamed about having no money, why did he always draw attention to it?  

Adam rolled his eyes. “Fuck you. Take that fucking thing off the table or I'm leaving.” 

That is what Adam said. What he thought, on the other hand, was more of a storm in his head:

_Fine. You want to fucking know why I won't take a fucking phone from you? Because no matter how much you don't think you are, you're part of the fucking problem. You giving me a phone is you saying I can’t make it on my own. It's part of the shit that'll keep me trapped, not something that sets me free. I have to know I can fucking make it even if the rest of my life is filled with no one but my parents in new forms. If I need you for a phone, then I'm not safe. You're here now, yeah, but there are a million reasons you might not fucking be here next time something goes wrong. Or you might be here but not give a shit. Or you might be the one who fucked something up for me. So that is my fucking rationale for not wanting your goddamn help. It would be fucking irrational for me to assume that for the rest of my fucking life there will always be someone there to give me what I need. The only rational assumption I can make is that at a minimum, I can count on myself to be wherever I am for the rest of my fucking life. No one else. So I buy my own goddamn phone and I pay for my own fucking food and if there's something I need I always know I can fix it myself. No one owns me. I don't have to go crawling to someone else and beg them to help me. I'm not fucking trapped._

“Back me up here, Dick,” Ronan growled at Gansey. 

Gansey’s face did a complicated Gansey-thing that managed to be a polite smile, a grimace, a condescending dismissal and a wicked grin all at once. Adam was impressed. He had some idea of what Gansey was thinking. And he was pretty sure that if Gansey was going to back anyone up here, it would be Adam.  

As Adam suspected, Gansey was indeed remembering the debacle that followed his own doomed attempt to force Adam to accept his help. It was last year, just after their tentative friendship had begun. Gansey, Ronan and Noah were going skiing, and Gansey wanted Adam to join them.  

Obviously, Adam had declined. Equally obviously, Gansey, the king of the clueless faux pas, had made a mess of things. First, while slowly figuring out that problem was money; and then, even more unforgivably, when he tried to solve it with money. Honestly, Gansey still didn't understand what exactly he'd done that was so bad. But he distinctly remembered how awful the following couple of weeks were.  

Adam had barely talked to him. He wasn't rude, exactly. Adam had just looked through him, the way he looked through everyone else at school. The way he used to look through Gansey, too, before they'd become friends. He was perfectly polite and responsive. He just wasn't really there.  

Ronan had dismissed Gansey’s anxiety with a rude gesture and some pearls of wisdom along the lines of  _fucking overreacting_ and  _his own fucking problem._ Gansey discounted Ronan's opinion, because he was clueless about some things but he was perfectly aware that Ronan felt threatened and jealous at the sudden inclusion of a new person in Gansey’s inner circle.  

Finally, Gansey had decided that if he wanted Adam to stop letting his pride get in the way of making his life easier, he ought to do the same. Gansey finally approached Adam and just asked him why he was being so shitty about everything.  

Adam, taken aback, had tried to explain it. He didn't think he was being shitty. He wasn't even angry with Gansey. It was just a clear equation to him: he, Adam, did not want charity or pity. He, Gansey, did not want Adam to refuse his help. He, Adam, had no right to ask anything of Gansey, and so would not ask him to change on his behalf. The only solution, then, was for Adam to remove himself from the equation. That way Gansey could continue being Gansey and Adam could continue being Adam and no one would get hurt.  

Ten months later, and Gansey  still didn't really understand Adam. But he learned to respect his feelings on the topic. Any topic, really. And Adam had learned that Gansey would prefer that Adam ask him to change something he was doing, rather than just removing himself from the friendship. 

Ronan was going to have to figure it out for himself. There was no way Gansey was getting involved.  

_ Squash 2 _

"Fuck kind of question is that?" Ronan's attempt at avoidance was so transparent as to border on nonexistent. Adam decided to take that as encouragement to pry further. 

"Fuck kind of question do you want it to be?" he teased. Ronan remained stubbornly silent. Adam refrained from sighing, but only just. "It's a genuine question, asshole. Why does it bother you so much?" 

Ronan picked furiously at the leather bands around his wrists. "Gansey literally tried to buy me a fucking diploma. So I fucking repeat: the fuck kind of a question is that?" 

Adam took the risk of sitting down next to Ronan, long legs folded under crossed arms as he balanced on the two-inch curb at the edge of the parking lot. It was possible that his shoulder was closer to Ronan's than might have been strictly necessary. It was also possible that Ronan's locked elbows sagged a few degrees, pushing their arms even closer together. It was undeniable that every centimeter of contact sparked with a heat that thoroughly made up for the cold asphalt beneath his thin jeans. 

"Since when do you give a shit what Gansey does?" Adam asked. Ronan remained silent. Adam hesitated, but then thought, fuck it, and pushed a little more. "And you fucking hate school. Why not take the bought diploma and enjoy the freedom?" 

It’s not that Adam didn’t know. He knew the answer. Or he thought he did. He wanted to hear Ronan say it 

Ronan finally blinked. He looked at Adam, letting the words float between them. His face hardened briefly, then softened again, ice forming and dissolving along the surface of furiously rushing water. 

“How the fuck is this freedom?” Ronan asked, voice stripped of its usual venom. “no matter how much Gansey doesn't think he is, he's part of the fucking problem. He's part of the shit that'll keep me trapped, not something that sets me free."

Ronan truly had no idea why this made Adam laugh until tears ran down his eyes, but that was ok. Hearing Adam laugh was fucking awesome. And the fact that Adam tilted into his side as he fell over laughing was another level altogether. Adam was such a fucking weird kid, though. That was ok. Better than ok, really.

_ Squash 3 _

“Fuck you. How long, Dick?” Ronan was already spitting words as he stormed into Gansey’s room. Gansey was annoyed. He'd been laid out by a fever that had made itself known during the night, and he felt sick and pathetic and thoroughly unwilling to entertain whatever fight Ronan was trying to pick with him now.   

But even when he was just a boy with a fever, Gansey was professional. So he just looked up and said mildly, “Specifics, Lynch. There are a number of ways to interpret that question.” Gansey’s mouth twisted up slightly, hoping that a bit of crass innuendo would diffuse the tension before it really took hold.  

His half grin was quickly extinguished by the look of rage in Ronan’s face. Gansey finally put down the book he'd been trying to read and looked more seriously at his friend.  

“How. Long. Have. You.  _Fucking_   _known?”_ Ronan’s eyes were dangerous as he bit out each syllable.  

By now, Gansey had some idea of what he might be asking him, but he couldn't half answer the question without being sure. So he stayed silent. Until finally Ronan gave in, ran his hand quickly across his face, and breathed out from behind closed eyes. 

“Parrish. How long?” Ronan's eyes opened again, and Gansey felt his chest tighten at the raw pain in his friend’s face.  

“A while,” he admitted simply. “Since the middle of last year.” 

Ronan stared. “The fuck, Dick?” He sounded more scared than angry. But Gansey hated being called Dick. And he hated being forced to think about this, this knowing. So Gansey just said calmly, “again, Lynch. Specifics.” 

Ronan walked close enough to loom over Gansey. Gansey stared back at him steadily, unimpressed. You couldn't be friends with Ronan Lynch if you took the posturing seriously. All at once, though, Gansey deflated.  

“Do you mean why didn't I tell you? Because it should be obvious, Ronan, that it's not my secret to tell.” In fact, Gansey wondered how Ronan had discovered the truth behind Adam’s obsessive privacy.  

Ronan laughed, an ugly, incredulous sound. “No Gansey. I mean, why the fuck didn't you stop him? From going back there?” 

This question was even stupider than the one Gansey thought he was being asked. “Have you ever tried to stop Adam from doing anything? He's the only one who can make that decision, Ronan.” 

Not that Gansey hadn't thought about it. He had, of course. He'd tried to talk to Adam about it back that first year. But the conversation went wrong like his conversations so often do, with him unintentionally causing offense and then desperately trying to backtrack from it. Adam had looked ready to kill him when he'd offered to pay for an apartment where he could live away from his parents.  

Worse, Adam looked like he might never speak to Gansey again. Gansey had decided not to mention the part about having already hired a lawyer to start looking into the paperwork around emancipation.   

“Are you fucking with me? When did that ever stop you from being a meddling asshole?” Ronan didn't need to specify this time. The context was unambiguous.  

“That was different, Ronan. You tried to kill yourself.” 

Ronan shook his head. “I wasn't trying to fucking kill myself.” This was a conversation that they both knew, through long experience, would go nowhere. 

Ronan wasn't done, though. “How is this any fucking different, Dick?”  

Gansey knew Ronan was furious with him. There were more than enough signs: the unrelenting refusal to call him by his preferred name, the white glow of his fisted knuckles, the sharp line of his mouth. He just wasn't sure exactly what Ronan was angry with him for, exactly. With Ronan, there didn't always have to be a reason. With Ronan, anger was the natural extension of love and protectiveness and fear.  

“It's not,” Ronan answered himself. “It's not one fucking bit different.”  

Gansey just shrugged. He wasn't going to try and explain that the reason it was  _fucking different_  was that Adam wasn't out of control. The opposite, actually. Adam was the most rational, deliberate person Gansey’d ever encountered. If he told Gansey that this was the only way for him to really free himself, Gansey was inclined to believe him.  

“Out of curiosity, what made him tell you?” Gansey asked carefully. Ronan snorted.  

“He didn't. His fucking black eye did. He told everyone some bullshit story. But I know a right hook when I see one.” 

“Jesus,” breathed Gansey. Adam had never come to school bruised before. He wondered if Adam’s father had figured that out. That he could stop him from escaping by marking him enough to keep him out of school. Until Adam couldn't miss any more school without risking failing the semester.  

His thoughts were interrupted by the sharp shrug of Ronan’s shoulders into his jacket, and the angry clash of his boots against the wooden floor as he stomped to the door. He was leaving. This was probably unwise.  

“Where are you going?” Gansey asked warily. Or maybe wearily. Or maybe a bit of both.  

“I'm driving Adam home. His bike is still fucked and he has to be home by ten.”  

“Ronan.” Gansey’s voice was firm this time. “Don't-“ 

“I'm an asshole, not an idiot, Dick.” And with that, Ronan was gone. Gansey listened for the quiet roar of the BMW leaving the parking lot. He stayed where he was, sitting quietly, for another minute. Two. Three. Then, with a sigh, he stood up and walked out to the orange monstrosity he thought of as his soul and started off after them. 

_ Squash 4 _

 “Fuck the bike. Get in the goddamn car and let me fucking drive you home.”

Adam startled. It was Ronan’s voice. Unmistakable.

But. Here, at Boyd’s. Inconceivable.

Adam didn't know what to make of Ronan. Ever, really, but especially not right now. Earlier that day, he’d noticed Ronan storm out of Latin about a minute after Adam walked in. He'd assumed Ronan was still angry about their argument earlier in the week. He'd tried to muster up the energy to care. But he couldn't, not today.

So he'd ignored Ronan and wondered if this was going to turn into a Thing. He hoped not, but expected it might. He had not expected Ronan to show up at Boyd’s just as Adam was washing his hands and trying to work up the energy to fix his bike so he could get home.

He wasn't sure how Ronan knew his schedule at Boyd’s.

It wasn't hard, though, to figure out how Ronan knew his bike was a mess. Everyone at school knew. Though no one seemed to know who had run their car into it as it stood, alone, leaning against the otherwise neglected bike rack at the back of the Aglionby parking lot. Nor whether it was out if malice or obliviousness. Adam wasn't sure which was worse.

It still didn't explain what Ronan was doing here, but for once, Adam wasn't going to turn down help. By the time he'd managed to lug the bike’s sorry carcass all the way to Boyd’s, he was late. Boyd had glanced at his bruised face and let it slide, but Adam had been working without a break since then and there hadn't been time to fix the bike before his shift ended. He'd finished his shift on time, despite starting late. He hadn't brought anything with him to eat tonight, so there'd been no reason to pause. So there should be time to fix it and still get home. Probably. Maybe.

But. He was tired. So fucking tired.

Being tired didn't matter. He knew it didn't matter. He had to get home, and that fucking bike was the only way to do that, and so. Fix the bike.

Now.

In a second.

No, now.

But then, Ronan's voice.

And after yesterday, he was willing to accept a ride to avoid setting his father off again.

So, Adam got into the passenger seat without an argument.

Accepted the greasy fast food bag that Ronan held out to him without an argument.

Ronan acknowledged this breach of protocol with a silently expressive eyebrow, and that was all.

Adam breathed out what would have been a relieved sigh, were it not for the other things that kept right on weighing him down even after the worry about a Thing with Ronan was lifted.

He leaned heavily against the window, and allowed his eyes to close, just for a second.

He immediately felt Ronan’s gaze on him, and his eyes flashed open. But now Ronan seemed to be ignoring him, fiddling with the radio to try and find something sufficiently shitty to listen to. Adam tried not to think too hard about how it made something in his stomach twist to watch Ronan being so… Ronan.

Soon he was smiling easily and rolling his eyes at Ronan’s latest theory as to why Noah seemed to always know everything that was going on.

“No, no, just fucking listen, ok?” Ronan was saying. “It’s the only explanation that makes any fucking sense. He's got to be a fucking ghost. He knows everything. He's gotta be able to float through walls and read minds or auras or some crap like that. I mean, think about it. Have you ever seen him in class? Do you even know his last name? Can you remember him moving in?”

“Yesterday. Czerny. And yes, I helped him carry his shit up three flights of stairs last fall.”

Ronan rolled his eyes. Adam laughed.

Adam opened the still-warm bag of fries and started eating them. The food was warm; the car was warm. Ronan's gaze felt less like slivered glass than it normally did. Adam’s shoulders let themselves forget about Adam’s face, and loosened enough to let Adam’s head rest on the seat when he laughed.

Ronan steered the car onto the neglected alley that backed onto Adam’s driveway without being instructed, despite never having been here before (as far as Adam knew, anyway). It was Adam’s turn to cock an eyebrow, and this time Ronan laughed.

Laughing felt good. Laughing together felt good. Adam didn't know what to make of that, either.

Too soon, they arrived. Adam knew better than to let Ronan's grey shark of a car linger in the driveway. But it was hard to peel himself off the seat. It was hard to will his bones to move, to bring him closer to the agitated source of the shadow cast by the figure behind the front window.

“You don't have to get out here, Parrish,” Ronan said lightly.

“Fuck you.” What else could Adam say to such a fucking unhelpful observation? “See you tomorrow, if you're not too committed to being a fuckup to come to class.”

Ronan's laugh was mirthless, but he pulled away obligingly. Adam waited for the tail lights of the BMW to dwindle before setting his shoulders and starting up the aborted set of stairs leading from the dirt of the road to the dirt of the porch.


	2. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: explicit violence. Verbal and emotional and physical. This is the (first part of the) episode in which Robert Parrish ultimately creates a whole new kind of silence in Adam's world. You can freely skip it. You already know how it turns out. The reason it is here, in this particular retelling, is that part of what I'm trying to explore is the interplay of silence and noise between Adam and Ronan. It will echo in later chapters, so to speak. (It's ok not to forgive me for that pun. It is probably unforgivable.)

_Adam_

It might be ok. Last night had been bad, and sometimes that was enough for a while.

Sometimes. Sometimes it wasn't, though. And Adam had to admit that the fact that his father was so clearly waiting for him was not a great sign.

The sick feeling in Adam’s gut was offset by the relief that no one would be here to see what Robert Parrish was likely to do next.

Adam didn't try to trick himself into believing that no one would know; just that no one would see.

Everyone knew. The results of his father’s rage weren’t subtle.

But. People knowing and not reacting was one thing. But people seeing, seeing and not reacting; that was something else, something he wasn't prepared to deal with. So, witnesses were bad. Silence was better. Silence was normal. Expected. Unavoidable. Preferable.

Adam had spent the the better part of two decades parsing the kinds of silence that greeted him wherever he went:

His mother's silence to start with. A silence that rang loud in the spaces between collisions off fist with rib, skull with wall, bone and skin with metal and glass.

His neighbors’ silence, deafening in the quiet night after the crashes and the cries ended.

His teachers’ silence in classes, his boss’s silence at work, his friends’ silence in the cafeteria when he made it back to school.

He knew they all knew. He knew that somewhere, they all agreed. He deserved his life. If he didn't, someone would surely have tried to change it by now.

Adam rejected the thought as it flew its way across his mind. He wondered when the thought would finally start rejecting itself. After he graduated. After he was old enough not to belong to his parents anymore. After he got the fuck out.

But at least the neighbors, the teachers, the classmates. At least they didn't see it as it happened. At least he could pretend and they could pretend. At least there could be a pretense that everyone didn't agree.

Adam reached the top of the stairs. He didn't make it all the way to the door this time, before it slammed open to reveal the full fury of Robert Parrish at his self-righteous worst.

“Fucking worthless piece of shit.” The words slammed home an instant before his father’s hand. Adam, balanced precariously at the top of the stairs, struggled to keep his feet under him. So much for hoping that one bad night would hold off the next for a while.

“Fucking lying piece of shit. You thought we wouldn't notice?” Words punctuated by fists and boots until all three melted in an incomprehensible fog.

Adam scrambled to understand what his father could be talking about. Sometimes Adam could head off the full violence of the moment if he came up with the right thing to say at the right time. But it was hard to focus with his vision blurring and his heart pounding and his stomach churning.

He really shouldn't’ve eaten those fries.

He suppressed a hysterical bubble of laughter, imagining using that excuse the next time Ronan tried to give him free fucking food.

He quickly got a hold of himself. He knew that laughing at this point in the proceedings was a poor choice.

But it was too late. It had been too late a long time ago. It had been too late before he'd been born.

He resigned himself to missing more school as his father’s eyes burned and his father’s arm lifted and his father’s mouth formed the words “…funny? You think this is fucking funny? Answer me. You fucking answer me when I fucking ask you a question.”

Adam considered briefly whether it would be better or worse if he answered.

And then, he slipped.

 

 

_Ronan_

Ronan knew he should drive away. He knew Adam was not interested in an audience. He knew there was nothing he could do. He knew Gansey was right. No one could force Adam to do anything.

But the sound of Adam’s laugh still lingered in the car.

The way Adam’s face had looked. Briefly relaxed, eating fries. Laughing.

Ronan stopped driving away.

God, Adam’s face. His stupid fucking blue eyes, usually so distant; dismissive. Those eyes alive, instead, laughing about Noah. Alive for a moment. Then shuttered, again.

Fuck you. That's what Adam said. When Ronan dared breach the unspoken. When Ronan had asked him to stay in the car. Fuck you. Fuck up.

Ronan turned the car back on.

But instead continuing to drive away, he found himself backing up. Heading back, heading up. He didn't know what the fuck he thought he was doing. Adam didn't want his help. Didn't want him. Barely tolerated him.

Ronan couldn't blame him. Ronan was an asshole. Adam was a genius. A beautiful, aloof, insufferable genius with no patience for Ronan and his bullshit.

A beautiful, aloof, insufferable genius with a fucking black eye and a bullshit story that provided less cover than a pair of plastic drug store sunglasses.

Ronan made a messy u-turn so he could drive faster.

He knew it was a laughable impulse. He knew he was no-one’s idea of a hero. He was the fuck-up kid of a mid-level crime boss that had been careless enough to get shot. In their driveway. In front of Ronan. He couldn't do anything, couldn't have done anything. He sure as fuck wasn't a hero.

And Adam didn't need rescuing.

Probably.

Unwelcome images briefly blocked his view of the present. Niall, in the driveway, covered in blood. The pale blank look in his mom’s face. Declan’s furious face when Ronan spit and cursed at him for keeping him away from his home. Matthew’s warm eyes, his voice hoarse as he begged them to stop fighting.

His vision cleared. He was nearly back to where he’d left Adam, not more than five minutes ago. This was a mistake. What was he doing, driving back to Adam’s house after dropping him off? After being so obviously dismissed? It was bad enough that he spent every waking moment imagining Adam’s fingers, imagining his eyes turning hungry when he looked at him. Actual stalking was a fucking step too far. Gansey was right.

But first, one look. He’d come this far. One look at the outside of the house wouldn't make things worse. He killed his lights as he drifted up the last couple of hundred feet to Adam’s house.

At first, he couldn't parse what he was seeing. Past and present clashed. Blood. Too much. Silence. Too much. Angry, red, hateful.

But no, this was now. This was Adam’s porch, not Niall Lynch’s driveway. This wasn't Niall Lynch’s body.

This was Adam’s body.

And it was falling. And fuck if Ronan was going to hide here frozen. Not this time.


	3. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible / To feeling as to sight?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: same as last chapter, canon-level violence and abuse. Part 2 of the scene where Adam loses his hearing. There's a lot of silence and a lot of noise but not a lot of plot that you'll miss if you prefer to skip it.

**_Adam_ **

Time stretched out. More words followed Adam as he stumbled. He grabbed onto them, but they didn't help.

“Eighty five dollars for a fucking textbook? And I stopped at Boyd's. Fucking interesting what he fucking told me.”

Think. It's what Adam did best. Textbooks? Boyd’s? The start of the school year brought with it a rash of second hand textbooks, which he was still paying off. He'd worked overtime for most of August to save up for the extra expense. His parents took half the money he earned at the garage, but he hadn’t told them about the overtime.

His father was still screaming, still walking towards him. Adam was stumbling backwards, trying to-

Think. Last night. He'd tried to finish his problem set for calc 2 before collapsing in bed yesterday. He was careful to keep his school life far from his parents. But it wasn't beyond imagining that something had slipped yesterday.

Like a receipt from the campus bookstore, or a pay stub.

He desperately sorted through a series of possible explanations. I get all my books used. I sell them back every term. The overtime was my own time. I didn’t give you any less money this month than last month.

But it didn't matter any more, because his stumbling had stopped. Now, he was falling.

As he fell, he was surprised to find himself thinking about Ronan.

As his head bounced off the sharp corner of the concrete stairs, he stopped thinking.

Time skipped. He was on the ground outside the house. He struggled to think. His father was still screaming. His voice echoed strangely.

"You think pretending ~~~~ You think ~~~~ help? You ~~~ stand the fuck ~~~ at me when I talk to you or ~~~ fucking wish ~~~~."

Adam pulled himself up onto his hands and knees. The movement sent everything swirling, hazy and painful. He vomited. He was starting to panic. He couldn't afford a concussion. He couldn't afford to let his grades slip. He had to stand up.

Strangely, he thought of Ronan again. Thought of how he looked, tall and dangerous, knuckles split after fighting with Declan. Thought of him screaming at Declan. Could practically hear his voice.

Adam struggled to get himself up.

It was Ronan’s voice. Again.

Impossible. Again.

Impossible, but true nevertheless. Ronan’s voice echoed strangely around the right side of his head. Adam looked around, confused. He couldn't locate the source of the sound. He couldn't place the flat silence on his left. Distantly he started to piece together what that meant. But he kept the knowledge aside, for now. There was something else he was supposed to do? He was looking for something?

Then reality rushed back in a single brutal wave. Ronan. Impossibly grabbing his father’s shirt; impossibly pulling back to hit the man. Stupid fucking Ronan who was going to get himself fucking killed. Fury and shame and something else flooded through Adam as he saw his father’s knuckles connect solidly with Ronan’s skull. He watched in silent horror as the two bodies fell, rolled, struggled, bled.

The world was a blur and fucking Ronan had destroyed everything, everything. What the fuck was he doing here. He was going to get himself killed and Adam killed and it was never going to-

Then. Impossibly.

More sounds.

Sirens.

His mother’s hand. On a phone.

For a sharp hopeful second, Adam believed that finally, finally, she'd called. She'd called the police, to stop Robert. She'd called because finally, it wasn’t his fault. She'd protected him. She'd risked protecting him.

He didn't linger in that fantasy for long. He watched the police pull Ronan off his father. Watched his mother talking quietly, pointing. Watched Ronan being cuffed. Watched his father being helped up.

Understanding cracked through him. Ronan would be arrested. His father would be free. This would never never end.

He would never finish school. He would never go to college. He would never sufficiently atone for whatever he had done. He would never get away.

His mother would never change her mind.

They were going to arrest Ronan. Ronan. Fucking Ronan.

He slowly registered the face of a police woman wavering in front of his bloody, swollen eyes. Something cracked and broke and fell and broke again and again and again and he heard his own voice, calm, firm, far away.

“My father did this. To me. I want to press charges.”

 

**_Ronan_ **

Something snapped. Ronan couldn't hear his own voice screaming over the rush of blood in his ears as he launched himself out of his car and straight at the figure advancing on Adam’s prone body.

Too quiet. Too much quiet. It was always like this, in the first adrenaline bleached moments of a fight.

And then, reality rushed in on a crashing wave of sound. Ronan relished the noise, savored the feeling of his fist as it flung Adams father back, back, back. Away from Adam. And then there was nothing but screaming and dodging and rolling.

And sirens.

Fuck.

He was going to get arrested.

Declan was never going to let him back home. He probably wouldn't even fucking bail him out if he got arrested, again. Gansey probably wouldn't this time, either. Fuck. He'd fucked up and he didn’t fucking care. He’d do it again. And again. He could hear Declan’s voice. “Yeah, you would, shithead. That's the fucking problem.”

Ronan didn't even try to argue with the cop who was pulling his arms back. He wasn’t sure where he was, or why he was fighting. He didn’t feel drunk, just furious. And overwhelmed. And sharply exultant, because-

He felt a rush of confused revulsion when he saw a woman lit up in the harsh glare of the porch lights, pointing.

Adam’s mother. Looked just like him.

Adam-

He tried to turn his head, to see if Adam was ok, to see if there was an ambulance. The cop pushed him forward roughly, and Ronan was just thinking may as fucking well add hitting a cop to the list, when two things stopped him cold.

The first was the unmistakable orange flash of Gansey (somehow, impossibly) arriving.

The second was Adam’s voice, frighteningly slurred but firm nonetheless. Speaking the words that freed Ronan’s arms suddenly, as the cop turned away. Towards Robert Parrish.

Adam’s voice, speaking both of their salvation.

“My father did this. To me. I want to press charges.”

Adam wouldn’t look at him, though. And Ronan knew, then. That he would never be forgiven for this trespass. And that was fucking fine. Because Adam was out. He had said the words. He was pressing charges, he was leaving. Ronan hadn’t managed to go a full day with the knowledge of Adam’s secret, and now he’d lost Adam, and it was all fucking worth it.

Ronan’s grin was feral. He spit blood, turned to where Gansey’s footsteps announced his approach. “Sup, Dick?” he drawled into Gansey’s astonished face. “You get Adam. I’ll meet you at the hospital."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, Gansey wasn't there. In my story he is- I need him. They need him. They all need each other, because this whole thing is a fucking mess and the only way through it is together.


	4. Or art thou but

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A stumbling, stuttering attempt to wrap ourselves around the impossible.
> 
> Or.  
> Art.  
> Thou.  
> But.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s been some time- more than a day, less than a month, maybe on the order of like a week- since that night. Adam has agreed to stay with Gansey and Noah (and Ronan) for now. Because what's the fucking point in resisting anymore? What's the fucking point of anything? He lost. Nothing is on his terms. So pride seems beside the point.

Habit born of countless years of trying to remain invisible stopped Adam in his tracks.

He'd gotten a ride back from work, so he was at the loft a few minutes earlier than usual. He'd been about to let himself in to the apartment, when the sound of voices stopped him. Not exactly arguing. More like, whatever it is that old married people do. Disagreeing by instinct, expressing affection with every volley.

It wasn't exactly that Adam was eavesdropping, it was more like he was-

Ok, fine. Fuck it. He was eavesdropping.

“You know that if you don’t try, Declan will just- ”

“Declan can go fuck himself. I don’t give a fuck.”

“But what about- ”

“Don’t say it. Don’t fucking bring Matthew into it.”

“Fine. But I’ll come with you, you know. You don’t have to do it yourself.”

“I know, Gansey. I know. Just leave it for now, ok?”

Silence, for a beat. Then -

“Oh my fucking god, put that shit away, you are not going to read to me from your folklore notes. I am not going to sit through another Celtic conspiracy theory session.”

“Overlapping accounts of ancient tradition do not constitute - ”

This went on for a while. Adam found himself unable to move away. He tried to ignore the unpleasant way his stomach twisted at the sound of Ronan’s voice. He hadn't spoken to Ronan since… he wasn't sure. Since that night? That seemed impossible.

But there was no denying that it had been a fucking long time since he heard Ronan’s voice sound like this. Open and real in a way he only was with Gansey.

Now, anyway. There had been a tiny window of time, maybe two months, when Ronan’s voice had sounded like that when he talked to Adam, too. But Adam had fucked that up, like he fucked everything else up in his fucking life.

Adam tried to ignore the way that Ronan’s face, jaw, shoulder, neck (ink, ink, ink) flashed through his mind. He tried to ignore the wave of missing that flowed over him at the sound of his voice.

What the fuck was wrong with him today? Why was his skin itching against his blood, why was a hole opening inside of him? It was done, already over. Ronan had been there, had seen, had.

And then. And so.

Here they were.

More voices. Ronan’s, again.

“Fuck. What time is it? I should- ”

“Just stay out here this time, Ronan. Give him a chance.”

“Fuck off.”

“So, what, then? You’re just going to hide in your room for the rest of eternity?”

“Fucking leave me the fuck alone, Gansey. I _am_ going into my room before Adam gets back, but I’m _not_ hiding from him. I’m giving him space. He doesn't want to talk to me. I'm not going to fucking force him to talk to me. So when he's here, I'm not.”

Adam froze. So, he hadn't been imagining it. Ronan was avoiding him. He had just said so, completely unambiguously.

It hurt.

It hurt, but Adam couldn't blame him. It was enough that Ronan had to get dragged into the shit that…

The shit that had happened, was always happening. The violence that was written into his genes, the violence that never stopped, that was always happening. The violence. That.

Had stopped happening, actually.

Actually, stopped.

Because of him. Ronan.

Stop thinking.

_Stop thinking._

It had happened. And now, Adam was staying there. Living with Ronan and Gansey and Noah. And, apparently, choking Ronan out of his own space just by sharing it.

Because Adam was always there. Because Adam was too fucking weak to find his own fucking place to live.

But, now. He knew. And now, he would go. It was enough. He'd figure it out. It wasn't that cold yet. He had to leave. He had to get his shit first. Go inside. That was first. Then, leave. Immediately.

Fuck, but he really had to sleep. Eating wasn't going to happen but he had to sleep or he wasn't going to even be able to -

Gansey’s voice followed Ronan’s out into the hallway where Adam stood outside the still-locked door, still frozen. Still.

“So, what then, Ronan? Is your plan to hide in your room every time Adam’s here? How long do you anticipate maintaining this charade?”

“ _Anticipate maintaining_ \- how about you stop talking like a fucking politician while you tell me off for the millionth pointless fucking time. It sucks enough for him that he has to stay here. He hates me-“

Adam’s blood was ice.

“He doesn't-“

“Fuck you Gansey, yes he does. He hates me for forcing that situation and it's fucking hard enough for him to stay here as it is. So yeah, if my staying out of his way makes this fucking disaster easier for him, I'll maintain this fucking charade for as long as it fucking takes, Dick.”

“He doesn't hate you, Ronan. He's angry, yeah. But you have to talk to him. You can't just-“

The acoustics in the hallway must have been really weird. Ronan’s voice sounded almost. But it wasn't. He couldn't. He didn't. Not about his father. Not about his home. Not about his mother, his brothers, his. Certainly not about Adam.

“Look, Gansey. It's fucking ok. If the price of getting him out of there was that he hates me, I'm fucking fine with it. I'd do it all the same again. I don't get how you let him keep going back there.”

Ronan's voice shook with the effort of holding back... whatever he was trying not to throw at Gansey. The anger he was holding in, anger at Gansey, anger for knowing but never doing a fucking thing about it.

Adam’s fingers shook. His fingers shook, and could someone please explain to him what the _actual fuck_ was going on. The words made no sense unless. Unless.

And that wasn't.

It. Wasn’t.

The full force of it hit him and for an endless instant he saw white, heard static.

Ronan.

Ronan saw, and.

Ronan did. Something.

Ronan did something.

No one. Before. I mean. They knew, everyone knew, but. No one had ever done. And now. Ronan was saying that he. And he had. He had. Only Ronan, ever. Had done something.

“I didn't _let_ him anything, Ronan,” Gansey's voice was close to pleading, though for what, no one could have said. “Adam makes his own choices, he can't be forced to –“

“Apparently he can.”

“But that wasn't –“

“Look Gansey, it’s fine, you didn't want to piss him off or push him away or hurt his feelings or what the fuck ever. I get it. But that's not me. Keeping the fucking peace isn't my thing. It’s the wrong kind of peace. I'd rather make him hate me than let his piece of shit father be the person who makes all the fucking choices.”

Adam’s understanding of the universe and his blighted place in it twisted; shifted; tried to realign.

“Ronan, I know that you…” for once, Gansey sounded… small. He didn't sound like he was completely in charge of his voice and words.

Whatever Ronan saw on his face made him cut Gansey off viciously.

“No, Dick, you don't know shit. Fuck this, and fuck you. I’m going to feed Chainsaw, and I'm going to stay in there while Adam’s here.”

“Ronan, that’s not-” Gansey sounded like Gansey again. Certain. Commanding. It didn't make a fuck of difference to Ronan. Little did.

So Ronan cut him right the fuck off. “And I'm going to do whatever the fuck else I think will make him ok with staying here. So. Fuck. Off.”

A pause. Adam could picture them perfectly; the disappointment on Gansey's face, the resignation on Ronan's.

Not even Ronan could withstand the weight of Gansey's disappointment. Not much made a difference to Ronan, but that was on the short list. So he didn't follow through on the threat of his words, he stayed in the conversation. He tried again.

Ronan’s voice again, steady. Direct. “Don't you want him to stay?”

Adam’s heart clenched violently. He didn't want to hear this. He should-

“Of course, Ronan. Of course I want him to stay.”

Adam’s frantic pulse slowed. Gansey wanted him. He wanted him.

“Yeah, well me too. I want him to stay.”

And just like that, Adam’s heart started pounding furiously again. Ronan? Ronan wanted him? But-

Ronan was still talking calmly. As though he were the adult in the room. Which just went against the fucking order of things.

“And he won't stay, if staying means having to see me all the time. So this argument is officially fucking over.”

And apparently, this time, it was.

Through the echoing confusion that was his entire fucking universe right now, Adam listened. He heard a door slam (presumably Ronan). He heard a loud caw (presumably Chainsaw). He heard an old man’s sigh (definitely Gansey).

He didn't know what to do, to think. He couldn't think. Ronan thought Adam hated him? The idea was so absurd, that Adam was frozen in place. Adam didn't hate Ronan. Adam didn't hate people. He didn't have the luxury of hating anyone. Disdained them? Yeah. Resented them? Fucking absolutely. Was exhausted by them? Every fucking day. Angry? Eye-rolling-obviously.

But he didn't hate. Hate was pointless. No one would give a shit if he hated them anyway.

Except, apparently.

Ronan.

Ronan's voice echoed around his head. Don't you want? Me too. I want. I want him. I want him to stay. And his other words, earlier. He doesn't want. He hates. I won't force.

Adam Parrish was a rational creature. It was his saving grace. It was his survival strategy.

The immediate facts were: He had to go inside. Had to sleep. He had been up since 4. He had been to work, to class, to work, and he had work again in 6.5 hours.

As a matter of course, Adam didn't cry, didn't pause, didn't wonder, didn't indulge.

Nevertheless, he found himself turning around. Walking outside. Heading to the river, slumping down on a bench.

And, finally, crying.

The fuck?

Apparently, Adam Parrish was crying, and this was fucking ridiculous.

He couldn't have told you why this was what pushed him over this particular edge. It was just. The whole. It was that.

It was.

Being.

Being wanted.

The word ghosted across his mind (wanted) and he was lost in his pain and grief and overwhelming (wanted) desperate (wanted) wanting.

He knew all about wanting.

But being wanted. That was the place he never let himself go. That sharp knot of pain that curled under everything else that defined him. When it was shifted like this, its razor edges came loose and scraped him raw, leaving him weak and overwhelmed and fucking crying goddamnit he does not fucking cry and this bullshit is going to fucking stop NOW.

And so it did. For a minute. Two. He got ready to stand up. But then it curled itself again and seared a new line through his still-raw self.

What if he was wrong?

Self doubt was another thing Adam did not have the luxury of. He tried to push away the new thought as firmly as he'd banished the unwelcome onslaught of tears. But the thought was stubborn and sharp and he had no choice but to look at it.

What if he was wrong? What if the stark path he'd willed for himself wasn’t real, after all? The clear line of work and school and not stopping until he broke free. The line that led from the loud ugly stench of home to the clean quiet safety of a degree and a job and an apartment and a full pantry and a door that locked and a bed he would never have to hide under.

What if he were wrong? Ronan was wrong. Ronan was sure that Adam hated him and Ronan was wrong and so isn't it possible, just possible, at least possible. That he was wrong, too? The thought was sickening (I'll never get away I'll never make this work I'll never be anything I'll never get out I'll never get out I'll never get out) but thrilling (my life might be bigger my world might be different I might not be alone I might be wanted I might be wanted I might be wanted).


	5. A dagger of the mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan is a dagger, all sharp edges. Even inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's all such fucking bullshit. All the sound and fury. Fucking signifying nothing. Life. Fuck it.
> 
> Or: a return to Ronan's POV.

Everything was just so motherfucking loud. All the fucking time.

The sun screamed its way through the windows in the morning; his feet crashed their way across campus at lunch; the machines that brought air to his mother’s lungs pulsed their electronic heartbeat at top volume through her hospital room every fucking weekend.

Ronan’s only possible defense against all the noise was noise of his own.

Shitty music, loud. In bed, in school, in the waiting room. Screeching birds and slamming doors. Fights, always fights. Tires, brakes, metal against metal against asphalt.

In the eye of his own storm of sound, Ronan could find his own brand of quiet.

Even his absence was fucking loud. He might close himself up in his room, but there could be no doubt that the squawking and thumping audible from every other room in the loft originated with him. And there could be no ignoring the fact that he was in his room, and not out there, with the rest of them.

Ronan knew Gansey wasn’t done with his quest to get him to leave his room. He was a persistent little fucker that way.

So it was not exactly a surprise when a knock sounded on his door that night, about thirty minutes after he’d retreated in anticipation of Adam’s return from work.

The part that was surprising was that the arm attached to the fist doing the knocking was draped in blue polyester overalls, not saffron-yellow cotton leisurewear.

The sight of Adam in his doorway stopped Ronan cold. It dried the words right off his tongue. Which was probably a good thing, given who he thought was knocking. Given what he’d been intending to say, which might’ve contained a few choice words about Gansey’s nose and where it had been, as well as a doubled-down expression of why Ronan was staying away from Adam.

Adam, who was now standing in the doorway, eyebrow cocked. Waiting, as if it was Ronan who’d knocked on his fucking door. Or maybe it just felt like that. Because it seemed to Ronan like everything was caught, frozen, waiting. Like the fucking planet had decided to stop spinning just for the fuck of it.

The thing was, regardless of what he’d told Gansey (and what he wished to be true of himself), Ronan wasn’t hiding primarily to help Adam.

The real truth of it was that he couldn’t stand looking at Adam these days. It was confusing, and humiliating, and made him hate himself with a kind of fierceness that leveled all other feelings to the ground.

And that was just it. The feelings. It was like, once you let one in, they all come crashing down, and you’re fucked. You’re buried; suffocated; trapped.

Ronan had learned that anger (and, to some extent, hatred) did not cause the same kind of avalanche. Those were feelings that left the walls around the rest intact. He had held on to this discovery like a drowning man with a crappy piece of whatever fucking boat had dashed itself against the rocks and left him with nothing but this. It splintered his fingernails and left him open to the relentless crashing surf, but it was better than fucking nothing. It was all that was left.

Something had started easing recently, though. In the last few months. As time dragged his sorry ass farther and farther from that horrible day when he’d done nothing and lost everything. Some other feelings had been able to slip in and out unnoticed, steady, unthreatening. Fondness maybe. Or affection.

But in retrospect, those turned out to have been more like the absence of hatred and fury, which he guessed is why they hadn’t ruptured the barrier he’d put around… it. Them? That? It. He didn’t even fucking know what “it” was. That knowledge was behind the barrier, too.

But now. Too much had broken again. Had crashed the fuck down, the day Adam had come to Latin with a black eye. The day when Ronan had finally done something, but found he’d still lost everything. The night he’d followed Adam back home after driving away from driving him home.

The relentless pull of Adam. Ronan had started breaking and was breaking still.

Because the thing (the _it_ , the _them_ , the _that_ ) was pain. Pain and sadness, and loss, loss, loss, and it was crashing down on him now and he had no defense against it. It hurt. It hurt too much. It hurt to see Adam hurt. It hurt like a motherfucker to see Adam hurt like this, by this, by the shithead who’d emptied the space that should have been filled by a father. To know with shuddering clarity that Adam’s loss mirrored his own, towered over his own, blocked the rest out.

And the avalanche was every bit as terrible as he remembered from those early weeks when he hadn’t yet learned how to stave it off. The searing, wrenching, excruciating amalgam of love and love’s shithead twin, loss.

On top of which. This new version of the agony, this new tidal force that threatened to crush him beneath its unyielding inevitability. This one was worse, so much fucking worse. Because it absorbed the full force of the first deluge, and then grew and swelled beyond it. Because there were some things that, once known, couldn’t be unknown.

Like the fact that he loved Adam.

Like the fact that he’d lost Adam.

Like the fact that, much as it wasn’t his fault (Niall, Robert), it also totally was (Declan, Adam). It was his actions and his inactions and his subsequent actions that damned him (following, fighting; fighting, following; seeing, seeing, seeing).

And now, here was Adam, at his door. Knocking. Willing to be seen.

So Ronan looked. He saw. He saw the almost-gone traces of green and yellow on Adam’s face, temple, ear. Saw the new way Adam held himself, angled slightly so that his right ear was incrementally closer to the potential source of relevant sound.

Ronan kept his eyes open as the waves crashed through him. Love. Loss. Sadness. Fury. Twisting, twisting, helpless rage and pain.

Adam waited while it happened. Like he knew it was happening, and he was ok with it, or at least willing to accept it and wait for it to run its course. Which was fucking impossible, and didn’t even actually make a fuck of sense, but what-fucking-ever.

Then Adam gave Ronan his crooked half smile, a smile from Before. Offered it up on an outstretched string of words. Words whose meanings could flicker in and out as needed, words perfectly suited to telling Ronan he could both have and hide, that it was ok.

“Can I have your notes for Latin from last month? I’m trying to study for the midterm and mine are kind of... incomplete.”

Ronan’s own smile arrived uninvited on his face, but he let it stay. He was nothing if not hospitable.

“What makes you think I even have any? I don’t need to take notes in Latin, shithead. I’m just naturally gifted.”

As Ronan had hoped, Adam groaned and rolled his eyes. “I can kick your ass in Latin any time, Lynch.”

“You standing here begging for my notes says different, Parrish.”

The tips of Adams ears glowed red, and distantly Ronan wondered if that had been a push too far. Fuck it anyway.

But then Adam rallied and raised an eyebrow and retaliated. “I guess you’re scared to let me see your notes because you know I’ll beat you if the playing field is even.”

“Fuck you,” Ronan retorted in undisguised relief. “But I need them too so you have to study with me.”

Adam laughed in surprise. “You need the notes? The great Latin scholar Ronan Lynch is planning to study?”

It was Ronan’s turn for glowing ears as he realized what he’d conceded. But Adam’s laugh was a newborn thing. So Ronan just flipped him off, and Adam sighed and relented, moving over slightly to unblock the door as he got the last word.

“Fine, Lynch. But we’re not studying in here. Your room smells like birdshit.”

Chainsaw cawed in well-timed protest, and Ronan caught Adam’s laugh as he reached back to grab his notes.

But then, suddenly, it was all too much. Ronan looked away. Took a break from seeing, just as he walked through the door. Which is why he didn’t see Adam’s eyes close as Ronan brushed past him on his way out. He missed the subtle flare of Adam’s nostrils as he breathed in sharply, as Ronan’s shoulder brushed across his chest as he crossed the threshold.

Ronan missed all that. But he didn’t miss the way his own heart sped up at the fleeting contact. It wasn’t like this was fucking news to him. He was just glad that, given that Adam couldn’t possibly reciprocate, at least he also couldn’t possibly know. Thank fuck for small blessings, or however the fuck that saying goes. 


	6. A false creation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, all Adam and Ronan know how to offer each other seems so false, nothing but an attempt to create something out of nothing. But there is no creation without a willingness to risk falsehood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you get for a guy who already has a pet raven and looks like he'll punch anyone who even thinks "happy birthday" at him? And also, why would you even bother?
> 
> tw: Adam remembers parts of his childhood in this chapter, and his childhood fucking sucked.

Adam wasn't sure when this had become their pattern. By now, he expected to hear Ronan’s knock sometime after he dragged himself home from work and before he collapsed into sleep. Sometimes Adam stayed awake just long enough to let Ronan in, but fell asleep before they'd even exchanged ten words.

He honestly didn't know what Ronan did with himself on those nights. He only knew that when he woke up, 9 times out of 10, there would be some gadget on the floor: a wind-up toy made of soda cans and wires that hopped around and screeched just like Chainsaw; a raspberry pi attached to a speaker, programmed with some vision-recongition AI shit that played the world’s most annoying song when you gave it the finger; a kind of metal-and-rubber thingie that attached to his bike chain and somehow kept it clean and oiled; a kickstand that made rude noises when it was kicked.

Ronan was a prolific insomniac who always had something occupying his hands. Despite himself, Adam had come to look forward to the bizarre gifts. He had come to look forward to Ronan’s knock.

He’d come to look forward to Ronan.

To the sharp lines the cheap desk lamp threw onto the wall behind him, the smell of soil and bird food and wood. Adam found his mind wandering at odd times to the color of Ronan's skin just below his shaved hair, the liquid movement of his tattoo as he reached above his head to stretch. The shockingly soft curve of his mouth open in sleep, those rare times that he was asleep while Adam was awake. The quirk of his lips that meant he was amused, the line of his mouth when he tried to hide being worried.

It kept Adam at Monmouth for longer than he’d intended.

Part of his not-quite-decision to stay was perfectly rational, and Adam rehearsed that part to himself as often as possible. It made sense to live rent-free for a while, so he could save up enough for a deposit on a hole-in-the-wall that would be marginally less shitty than the extraordinarily shitty hole-in-the-wall he would currently be able to afford. (Even the shittiest apartments in New York demanded first and last months’ rent up front; often more, especially if you were just a kid with no employed adult willing to act as guarantor.)

So, he stayed. Adam no longer felt like he was intruding on his friends, now that Ronan wasn’t hiding every time he showed up. Quite the opposite, actually. Now it seemed like wherever he was, Ronan found a way to be there too.

And that was the less rational reason he was still living there. Adam just wanted more of… this. Whatever “this” was. Whatever it was, Adam wanted more of it. And he wanted to get to have it without having to define it. And he knew this was childish but so was Ronan, so.

Moving out would mean an end to this confusing and uncertain dance he and Ronan were doing. Adam wasn’t ready for it to end. And he definitely wasn’t ready to have to name it, or make it explicit.

When he moved to wherever it was he would move, there would be no more late-night knocks on his door. No more impromptu sleepover parties. No more bizarre creations left like offerings on the floor when Adam woke up.

The current situation allowed them to see each other all the time. It was just the nature of being roommates. It didn’t have to be an expression of anything, or a set of actions with any meaning.

Adam knew perfectly well by now that these actions weren’t meaningless any more. He was too smart and too self-observant to be unaware of the fact that his incessant thinking about Ronan was because he liked him.

“Liked” him. What an idiotic phrase.

Fuck that, no reason to be coy in his own head. He was – but what the fuck other word was there? Not love, that wasn’t it. Crush was stupid. Infatuation was too passive. Lust was incomplete. Smitten was… Hmmm. Smitten. Maybe.

As long as he didn’t have to say it out loud, Adam could go with smitten. It captured the feeling of wanting to be close, and allowed space for that feeling to take its time deciding what “close” meant.

Adam was pretty sure that Ronan was smitten too.

(Adam was unaware that that this idea, as it flew threw his mind, caused a small warm smile to steal across his face. It was a nice smile, and it was a shame he never saw it. That he never even knew it was available to him, that it was an expression he was allowed to have.)

Living in the same (weird, giant, many-roomed, airy, sunny) space allowed them to be smitten without having to put any cards on the table. Adam was ok with letting himself have this, for now. Especially while the rational reason still stood.

The goalpost of accumulating three months’ rent was reassuring. It let him enjoy this intervening time without worrying about what it meant.

Tonight was different though, and Adam was anxious. The easy, unquestioned pattern of knocking and opening, of entering and seeing, of sitting and talking and periodically coming into contact for some reason or another. The pattern was thrown off, today.

Because today was Ronan’s birthday.

Adam knew it was Ronan’s birthday because this morning, Gansey made pancakes (an event that should never be allowed to happen again) and tried to get everyone to sing Happy Birthday to a scowling, furious Ronan, who just stomped into his room and slammed the door.

Adam had known all week that it was going to be Ronan’s birthday, actually. Because Gansey had been trying to convince everyone that they should plan a party.

Luckily, cooler heads prevailed. Gansey could be kind of an idiot. A kind, well-meaning, apologetic idiot whose friends always forgave him, but an idiot nevertheless.

Adam wondered if you have to have experienced a given level of pain yourself, directly, in order to not be eternally clueless about how it impacted other people.

Adam wondered whether Blue’s (and, for that matter, Henry’s and Noah’s) understanding that a birthday party was a shitty idea meant that the answer to this question was no, or if it meant that they each harbored their own secrets.

Regardless, they had managed in their unanimity on the topic to convince Gansey not to make a party. Nothing could convince him not to make pancakes, though.

Which was actually probably a good move. Not doing anything at all would have called even more attention to the birthday. This way, Ronan had time to stomp and hide before they had to leave for school. Well, the rest of them had to leave. Ronan had, not surprisingly, ditched class today.

But tonight, Ronan hadn’t knocked. It’s not like Ronan knocked every night, so Adam should probably assume he wasn’t going to. But Adam wasn’t ready to call it yet. It was later than usual, but not so late as to be definitively a no-knock night.

Time ticked by, and it started to actually feel a little bit like a relief. The relief of letting inertia pull him deeply into the stifling familiarity of “The Way Things Are,” freeing him from the relentlessly exhausting project of “Making Things Better.”

Adam already spent more than enough of his life swimming upstream against the sludge of his personal status quo. He really didn’t need to add “Things With Ronan” to the list of things he was burdened with fixing.

Ronan didn’t want to be around him tonight. And that was fucking fine. Plus, now Adam wouldn’t have to face the question of whether his birthday present had been the right choice or not.

Adam had spent a fair amount of time thinking about what to get for Ronan’s birthday. He tried thinking about what he’d want Ronan to get for him, but that quickly failed.

First, because as far as present giving went, he and Ronan were pretty much on opposite spectrums of having (nothing; everything) and of willingness to take (fucking no; ok without having to think twice about it).

So Adam had put off thinking about what to get, and turned to the question of what to do.

Adam expected that to be a little easier, since he hated his own birthday just as much as Ronan did. It was impossible for Gansey, or even Blue or Noah or Henry, to understand what it was like to hate your birthday. But Adam understood, so he should be able to guess what Ronan would want.

But when Adam tried to translate this vague feeling of kinship into an actual plan, he discovered that he was (again) wrong. The way he hated his birthday had nothing in common with the way Ronan hated his.

For Adam, his birthday had always been a trigger. Or, more like one of those little button things that movie villains sometimes held in their hands, one tiny button to set off a series of remote bombs.

For starters, his birthday always set off his father. Anything that brought Adam into the spotlight of his father’s attention could only end one way. So he avoided home as much as possible on his birthday. He tried to be as small as possible, to take up no noticeable space. It was not the most enjoyable lesson to learn. Few of his parents’ lessons for him were.

It started when he was little, maybe five or six. When he started going to school, he discovered that other kids had birthday parties. So he asked his mom for a party too. She’d said yes.

But the morning of the party, Adam did something wrong, He could no longer remember what it had been. Maybe talked too loudly at breakfast. Or maybe asked for more of something? Or maybe he bumped his elbow on the table and started crying. Or maybe he had spilled his milk, or gotten up without being excused, or whined about his cereal being soggy.

Anyway, he had done something wrong that morning, and his father had hit him. His mother had looked at his swelling face and said angrily “now look what you’ve done.”

She told him that now she had to cancel the party and call all the other kids and tell them not to come. He couldn’t have a party now, she said, with him looking like that. He started to cry, so she hit him too, and sent him to his room to think about how much trouble he caused. And how selfish and ungrateful he was. All the time she had put into planning a party for him was wasted, all because he couldn’t behave himself for one goddamn minute.

He’d tried again another year. Kids invited him to their parties, and they told him in school that he had to invite them back, because that was the rule, and he had to. So he tried again, but this time his mother said “Adam, do you really think you’ve earned a birthday party?” and he realized that no, of course he hadn’t.

He was still selfish, was still ungrateful. He still continued to make his mom so angry and disappointed that she would have to say things like “just wait until your father gets home.”

He was still getting himself in trouble at home, more and more and more. So of course he wasn’t good enough to deserve a party. But he still didn’t know what to tell the other kids at school. He had already stopped talking to the other kids, mostly, anyway, so this was just another reason to avoid them.

After that he gave up on birthdays, and the other kids gave up on him, and it all settled into the routine that has basically been the rest of his shitty fucking life.

Until Ronan.

So. Adam’s birthday made him feel small and invisible and defective and sad.

But.

When he thought about his friends now, thought of Ronan and Gansey and Blue and Henry and Noah, thought of them doing something for him on his birthday. It made him feel a twist of despair, but a twist of hope too. The past was a shithole, but he knew that already. And every fiber of his unyielding self was pushing as hard as it could towards a different future.

So, Adam was open to potential future birthdays. He was already intent on overwriting the misery that came before. He could imagine building new memories to blot out the old ones.

And Adam knew that it wasn’t like that for Ronan. At all.

Ronan hated his birthday too. But it was the opposite. For Ronan, it was the past that was full of joy. Joy and love and friendship and belonging.

Ronan hated his new birthdays because they threatened to steadily overshadow the old ones. Each new birthday cut another thread that tied him to a happiness he could never hope to regain or recreate.

Which made it much more of a puzzle. How could Adam both acknowledge and erase Ronan’s birthday at the same time? How could he acknowledge Ronan, but erase the lines that the present moment couldn’t help but draw over the past?

The answer, when it came to him, was both obvious and stupid. The thing to do was to let Ronan hide, drown, forget. Give him permission to be his worst self. Accept the worst of him without reservation or judgement.

To put it bluntly, help him get blackout shitface drunk. Take him outside of time and space and get him out of his head.

With a kind of determined reluctance, Adam planned. He ate less, worked more, and saved enough money to buy a not-completely-shitty bottle of tequila. Ronan’s birthday was on a Friday. Adam rearranged his schedule and took a series of double shifts, so he could completely clear Saturday to deal with the aftermath of staying up all night and drinking.

And now, it was Friday night. Barely. It was almost Saturday. And Ronan hadn’t come. And apparently, Adam was saved from his ill advised and honestly just completely embarrassing and stupid plan.

He didn’t feel saved, though. He felt small, and sad, and defective.

Happy fucking birthday.

He briefly toyed with the idea of just drinking the tequila himself. What’s one more fucking bridge to jump off?

He was saved, after all, from this unlikely question. By Ronan of course. Because somehow Ronan was always saving him.

But Adam wasn’t above exacting a tiny measure of revenge for the hours of doubt Ronan had put him through. So, instead of just grunting permission to fucking get inside already you jackass as he usually would, Adam pulled his door open. Muttered “about fucking time, Lynch,” to a briefly startled Ronan. Turned back after a couple of steps to ask, as though genuinely exasperated, “are you just going to stand there like an asshole all night?”

Adam had to turn to hide his small smile when Ronan just went with it, and followed him out into the cold night. There was only one more unknown variable-

“Keys,” Adam demanded. And Ronan, just shaking his head, threw him the keys to his car and said

“you know it’s my birthday and not yours, right, dickhead?”

“Then you should’ve fucking eaten Gansey’s pancakes. Too late to change your mind now. So shut the fuck up and get in the car.” Adam didn’t even try to hide his smile this time. Getting the car had been easy, and now there were no more unknowns in his plan.

Well, except for the looming unknown that was Ronan Lynch. But that one couldn’t be removed from the equation, so Adam didn’t count it.

“You planning to tell me what the fuck we’re doing?” Ronan asked without venom as he obediently got into the passenger’s seat. Adam just rolled his eyes and slapped Ronan’s hand away from the sound system on the dashboard.

“Oh no. For this ride, we have a specially curated Spotify playlist called This Is: The World’s Shittiest Music.” Adam turned the sound up as loud as it would go. Which was pretty fucking loud, seeing as how this was Ronan’s car. As Ronan's music came pouring out of the speakers, he turned to look at Adam with confusion, as though he thought Adam hadn't intended it. But as the seconds went by and the music Adam had chosen continued to be the music Ronan would have chosen for himself, Ronan smiled.

Ronan's smile was a wild thing, but not a sharp one. This smile was open and real, and it filled Adam with a thrill of satisfaction followed by a thrill of fear. This wasn't a game. Ronan was real, almost hyperreal. Ronan's feelings owned him and could undo him, and were not a thing to play with.

Adam wasn't playing.

Not that he wasn't having fun. As soon as they got far enough out of the city to be safe (even when feigning irresponsibility, Adam couldn’t help but be responsible) Adam pushed the car past 110 mph. He rolled down all the windows despite the frigid air, and the universe focused itself down to nothing but this: the dangerous endless rushing of the world around their heads as they cut a screaming line through the heart of it.

More than the tequila (which Adam had shoved into Ronan’s hands, still in its liquor store issue brown paper bag, with no explanation beyond one dusty eyebrow rising up his still-tan forehead), this was Adam’s gift to Ronan.

Letting him be an irresponsible shithead. Letting him drown it all out and block it all off and get lost in sound and speed and wind. But do it all without having to be alone.

(And also without worrying about worrying Gansey. Though, Adam hadn’t actually thought of that in advance, and Gansey actually did worry. But Ronan assumed Adam had cleared it with Gansey, and so for Ronan, that was part of this surreal gift.)

For Ronan, the whole thing was surreal. He generally liked being in control of things like driving his own car and choosing his own destination, because he was so woefully not in control of anything that fucking mattered.

He’d experimented with letting go. With Kavinsky, mainly. He’d let Kavinsky set the pace, the place, the plans. The intoxicants. And that had been a fucking disaster, enough that even Ronan had been smart enough to put an end to it.

But this was different. When Kavinsky had been in control, he’d pulled. He’d dragged Ronan into his space, sunk hooks into him that dragged him along behind.

Adam’s version of taking control was meeting Ronan where he was. Entering Ronan’s space and holding it fast for him, so Ronan could be Ronan but could also let go, just a little, of the crushing burden that being Ronan usually entailed.

Adam finally pulled the car onto a dirt shoulder off the road all the way out at the farthest tip of the north fork of Long Island. He walked quickly away from the car, assuming Ronan would follow.

Ronan did.

Ronan didn’t need the alcohol. The world felt blissfully muted enough without it right now. But he knew what it must have cost Adam to get it for him, in more ways than one. So he slipped it from its bag into the inside pocket of his jacket (it was, admittedly, not a very large bottle) and followed Adam as well as he could in the dim light of the moon.

Adam had clambered up a small pile of rocks next to the ocean. Ronan climbed up after him and stood next to him.

There was something electric and alive about standing next to Adam like this, at the end of the earth and the start of the sea and sky. With the roaring in his ears from the wind and waves erasing the ever present noise from his mind.

But. Ronan couldn’t actually deal with being this close to having something he desperately wanted. Better to ruin it proactively than wait for it to turn out to not have been anything to start with. So he broke the charged silence.

“Fuck you Parrish, it’s cold as balls out here. What the fuck are we doing?”

And here came Adam’s third and last gift to him. Adam laughed, loud and beautiful. Adam didn’t let Ronan destroy this. He leaned down, picked up a heavy rock, weighed it his hand for a moment, considering.

Then he gave a crooked smile, said “this is what we’re fucking doing, you asshole,” and threw the chunk of stone far, far, out into the water, where it crashed with a gratifying and thunderous splash into the rocky sea.

“You drove me three hours into fucking nowhere to throw rocks into the water?” Ronan demanded (with feigned scorn but genuine confusion).

Adam shrugged. “We could just throw them at each other,” he suggested, “but that would be harder to explain to Gansey.”

There wasn’t much Ronan could say to that, so he shrugged too, picked up a rock, and hurled it as far as he could into the murky gray-blue of a night sea indistinguishable from sky.

It was bizarrely exhilarating. So was the arc of Adam’s arm as he threw rock after rock. So was the sharp edge Adam’s voice cheering a good throw, and the frenzy of his hair as it was blown every which way by the icy wind. So was the pink that the cold put in his cheeks, and the brightness in his eyes when he looked at Ronan. So was the way their shoulders touched when they stood too close. So was the way Adam’s fingers felt around Ronan’s arm when he grabbed it to stop Ronan from falling when he got pretty fucking drunk and overbalanced on a throw.  

They drank tequila and threw things until Ronan forgot where he was or why he was doing it. Well, Ronan drank tequila. Adam had planned to. Tonight only. For Ronan. But one tiny sip had him spluttering and coughing, and Ronan literally fell on his ass from laughing so hard. Adam pretended to be offended, and Ronan pretended to have lost all respect for him.

They laughed and drank and threw things until they were both too cold to feel their fingers and it became impossible to throw things anymore. They threw things until they were hoarse with laughing, until they were too exhausted to stay upright. Then they crashed in the car and woke up and got pancakes and coffee and drove back to the real world.

Adam discovered that he could actually hear what Ronan was saying when he was in the driver’s seat, with his left ear next to the window instead of his right. He also discovered that there were some benefits to being deaf in one ear, and pulled off the road to make Ronan switch out with him when Ronan insisted on controlling the music for the way back.

Ronan noticed that Adam had changed his whole schedule so they didn’t have to be back until late Saturday. Adam noticed that Ronan kept the little (mostly empty) bottle of tequila in the pocket closest to his heart. Ronan noticed that Adam’s eyelids moved slightly over his eyes when he fell asleep again as soon as he didn’t have to drive anymore. Adam noticed that Ronan followed him into his room without knocking when they got back. Ronan noticed that Adam had made room for him. Adam noticed that something was different now. Softer but stronger.

As for Gansey. And Blue and Noah and Henry. They noticed it all. They had noticed it for a while now. They rolled their eyes and placed bets and pretended to gripe about how any two people could possibly be that that blind or stubborn or whatever Ronan and Adam’s problem was. But it still made them all smile in a way that made Adams ears turn red and made Ronan stomp and huff and be an all around pain in the ass. In short, everything had changed and nothing had changed, which is pretty much all you can expect from a birthday. 


	7. Proceeding from the heat oppressed brain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hard to think of a phrase more apt for Adam than "heat oppressed brain."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, ok, maybe some things weren't as bad anymore. But some were. And some were worse, actually. And he was so fucking tired, and something would probably give at some point. But right now, there's nothing Adam can think to do but keep going. One foot then the next, step by step, eyes straight ahead.

Adam fucking hated the phrase “why don’t you just…” that always followed him wherever he went (so long as the place he went contained people; everyone somehow always thought they knew all the answers already).

Why don’t you just… not go home? Just fight back? Just put what you need in the car and leave? Just stop working so many hours? Just get some sleep? Just not worry so much about your grades? Just take the goddamn phone? Just stay in the car? Just live here for free? Just eat the fucking pizza it’s only a fucking slice of pizza for Christ’s sake?

Most of the time it wasn’t even a real question. It was an expression of total ignorance. It drove home the gulf between him and everyone else, well-meaning friends and Aglionby assholes alike.

He wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that when Ronan asked, it actually was a question. A challenge maybe, more than a question. Regardless, in Ronan’s mouth the words were not just a statement of obliviousness. Ronan wanted answers when he asked.

And that was its own special brand of shitty.

It was hard to imagine explaining to Ronan the whole complicated chain of emotional and psychological cause-and-effect that led from being a terrified tiny kid to being a nearly-grown almost-there seventeen-year-old. It was hard, not just because it was intricate and convoluted and Adam didn’t want to fucking think about it. It was hard because it only made sense if you’d been there. If you knew what it had been like. If you knew what it was, to be so small, to be helpless. If you knew what it took to not have totally succumbed.

It wasn’t that Adam didn’t know the answers to Ronan’s questions about why he “didn’t just.” It was that the real answer was as unsatisfying as it was simple: Adam didn’t just do things, because Adam couldn’t ever just anything. There was nothing just about it, in any sense of the word. To make it out of his life intact, Adam had to become something fierce. Something impenetrable. Something clever and feral and girded with the only materials available to a child who had nothing: distance, difference, and a stony, stubborn, unwavering pride.

Answering Ronan’s questions, even in the secret silence of Adam’s own mind, required a return to that state from before. He had to return to it if he wanted to understand the ladder he’d built to escape it.

He didn’t want to understand it. He just wanted to climb the last couple of fucking rungs and then burn that thing to the ground. He didn’t want to start experimenting with the spacing between the steps, or with trying to replace the scrap metal he’d built it from. He didn’t want to explain why all the “justs” weren’t options, and he didn’t want to have to figure out if some of them had become options. He didn’t want to revisit his whole fucking life in order to explain it.

He didn’t want anyone else to understand it, either. (He was mostly aware that when he said “anyone,” he meant “Ronan.”)

He didn’t want Ronan to understand what he had been, before. He didn’t want Ronan to ever think of him as small or scared or needing help. He wanted the people who knew him now to think of him as having been always this size, as if he had simply blinked into existence already six feet tall and 150 lbs.

Adam was smart. Adam knew a lot of things. Adam knew, for example, that it wasn’t his choice to have aged in the normal human way. He was perfectly aware that no one evaded the journey from fetus to infant to toddler to child to tween to teen to almost fucking finally adult. Adam also knew that it hadn’t been his choice (or his fault) that a desperately long stretch of that process involved being small. So, so, so small. He knew all of that, but it was humiliating nevertheless. It was exhausting and humiliating and it didn’t bear thinking about, and he sure as fuck wasn’t going to explain it to Ronan.

All of which was just to say, Adam really needed to find his own place to live. A place with no one in it to keep asking him questions. A place that wasn’t a thing he was being given by other people. A place where he could have some reprieve from the asking and the ignoring and the pretending. A space where he could be the broken struggling thing he was, without also being challenged to explain it or change it or justify it.

But. Adam was tired. He still had nowhere to go but Gansey’s makeshift factory loft, and it was out in the wilds of industrial Brooklyn. Which was far from his job at the garage in Queens. The time it took to get between school and work and bed had stretched the already thin structure of Adam’s life close to the breaking point. So there was no way to add more hours, to save money more quickly, to accumulate a down payment on his own place any faster than he already was.

Adam was tired. His capacity to think or plan beyond the next few hours was disappearing. The fear and exhaustion were like a sentient thing, a monster that took over his hands and his eyes and left him moving emptily through his day.

Every time he went to work in Queens, Adam felt sick with fear. And it was a fucked up fear. Part of it, anyway.

Part of the fear was just a visceral reaction to being so close to that place he still thought of as home. Which made some sense.

Part of the fear was the knowledge that Robert Parrish knew exactly where and when to find him, when he was at work. That fear made all too much sense.

Maybe the part that was fucked up wasn't actually the fear.

The part that was fucked up was the hope that came mixed into the fear. Not really hope. More like, a twisted wish that what he feared would finally happen. That his father would find him. That his father would hurt him. That he wouldn't have lost that primary connection to home. That maybe he'd go home, to make it happen, unwillingly but voluntarily. To see his mom. To feel his dad. To be less lost. If he couldn't have love, he could have pain. In his relentless exhaustion, it wasn’t clear to Adam if there was truly any difference between the two.

Adam, the knower of things, was perfectly aware that it made no sense for him to miss home. Sadly, he was even more aware of the fact that he did, anyway. He missed his parents, and he hated himself for missing them. Missing home was a new shame, and it was a secret shame. The old shame of where he came from and what had been done to him wasn’t secret anymore. But this new shame was still his, alone. And that made it valuable to Adam, and that was fucked up, too, and maybe Adam didn’t even know how to exist as a person with no shameful secret to hide.

Fuck that. That wasn’t him. He wouldn’t let it be. He had to stop going to Queens. He needed a new job even more than he needed a new place to live. But. Adam, the knower of things, knew that trying to find a new job closer to school was impossible, or he'd have done it ages ago, when he still lived in Queens. Trying to find a job in Brooklyn instead of Queens had so far proven just as hard.

At first, it was because looking for a job with a black eye and stitches stretched across his forehead wasn't very productive.

But even now that he had healed (his face had, at least; he still couldn’t hear out of his left ear), there was the unresolved fact that he had to move. It was impossible to know what job would turn out to be close to a nonexistent apartment he may never find, and there was no point in finding one job just to have to find another one when he moved. And he had to move. He really needed to find his own place. And then he'd have to start job hunting all over again. So it made no sense to switch jobs, now. It made sense to keep his eye on his goal, and get through every fucking step until he made it. The Adam Parrish way.

He couldn’t just avoid Queens. And that was that. So Adam shut down his thoughts as best he could, gathered up his shit, and headed straight from school to work.

His uncooperative thoughts refused to stop circling around the loop of knowing and wondering. How many of the things he felt and feared and wished were Adam Parrish, and how much were the exhaustion that lately seemed to own him?

The universe, apparently, was equally curious about Adam’s uncomfortably conflicted feelings about hearth and home. A curious universe was really the only explanation. Because when Adam finally made it to work, and opened the door, his father was there.

Adam finally made it to work, and opened the door. His father was there.

He opened the door. His father was there.


	8. I see thee yet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It doesn't matter how much Adam tries to see into the future. It doesn't matter how much he tries to hide the past. He has no choice but to live on the razor edge of the present, always seeing. But there is comfort, thin as it may feel now, of Gansey's willingness to always see him, too, for who he is. Though Adam makes that very, very hard, sometimes.

For all his planning, Adam hadn’t seen this coming.

Apparently, any money earned by a minor legally belongs to their parents. Apparently, Robert Parrish knew enough about this to show up here, at work. Apparently, Adam was not done paying for the sin of existing.

His father was there. It was like Adam’s circling hopes and fears and shames and doubts had drawn him there. Except, of course, Robert was there for his own reasons. Not to satisfy the universe’s curiosity or to fulfill any fucked up wishes Adam may or may not have had.

Boyd looked at Adam apologetically, but he moved aside, delivering Adam to the presence of Robert Parrish. As he turned away, Boyd quickly explained to Adam in an embarrassed whisper that his father was demanding that Adam’s paycheck be sent directly to him. Then he made his way to the other side of the room and pretended to concentrate on something else as Robert stalked toward Adam.

Adam had dropped the criminal charges against his father almost immediately. His only goal in filing them to begin with had been to get the police away from Ronan. Once that had been achieved, he was not interested in adding child protective services to the list of things in his way. He couldn’t risk being forced into foster care or a group home. He had been handling it all just fine on his own, he had less than a year to go, and he wasn’t fucking putting it all at risk now.

As long as he dropped the charges, nothing had to change, really, except where he slept. He couldn’t go back home anymore. Obviously. But there was no way his parents were going to report him as a runaway, now that there were witnesses that they couldn’t trust to keep their mouths shut. Adam would pretend his parents didn’t exist, and they would have no reason not to do the same.

But of course nothing could ever just be that fucking simple. His parents weren’t willing to just ignore him back. They were never going to let him go, despite the years of telling him they wished he wasn’t there. Or maybe it was just the money that they couldn’t let go. Either way, Robert Parrish was here, very much not ignoring Adam’s existence.

At least now Adam knew that Robert Parrish finding him didn’t make him happy, after all. It made him sick. It made him angry. It made him despair. Most of all, right then, it made him regret the decision he’d made, not to give any more money to his parents now that they could no longer demand that he pay them back for the roof they put over his head and the food they put in his mouth.

Adam knew that keeping his full paycheck was a risk. But it was also his only real hope for being able to save enough for a down payment on an apartment and actually paying rent at some point. It wasn’t like any of his other expenses had magically disappeared. So he took the risk.

And now here was his father, smugly looming over him at work.

Adam managed to maneuver his father outside, to spare himself the further humiliation of Boyd witnessing the whole thing. The need to hide remained as ingrained as ever.

He needn’t have bothered, this time. In the end, Robert didn’t do more than threaten. He spit a warning to Adam, that he better not try to cheat his parents out of this money by just not showing up to work. He swaggered with the satisfaction of having Adam trapped, still. There was no need to complicate it with violence, not right now. In public. He could push Boyd to hand over Adam’s paycheck, but he wasn’t going to push harder than that unless he had to. And didn’t have to, because Adam was trembling anyway. The memory of pain and the reality of fear were enough to give Robert what he’d come for, and so for once he left without touching Adam.

The combination of terror and fury and relief at not being hurt made Adam lightheaded. But he just turned around, pale and silent, walked back into the garage, and changed into his coveralls. One foot in front of the other. Time moved and skipped. Cars, tools, engines, sounds, movements. Adam floated mindlessly through the rest of his shift. Fortunately, his hands and eyes worked perfectly well without him, so he had gotten everything done and was just finishing up, still with enough time to get some studying in before sleeping.

Except that was wrong. He forgot. At some point, Gansey had called. Adam remembered that now, but had forgotten in between. Adam couldn’t remember what was said. He was just left with an impression of anger. Probably his. Yes. Gansey had tried to give him something, he couldn’t remember what. Whatever had happened on the phone, Gansey wasn’t coming. Adam had been letting Gansey drive him back to Monmouth from work, because it wasn’t worth saying no so many times. There was no point, anymore. But today he’d said no, to something.

Adam’s feet seemed to be moving without the rest of him. He let them. His feet moved and his mind left and this was the only thing that felt right, the only thing that was real. Moving, moving, moving, moving, moving.

=========================

Gansey was still awake when Adam finally got home. Admittedly, Gansey wasn’t a great sleeper. But it didn’t help that Adam had refused his offer of a ride back from work, and then failed to return home. It was two thirty-four in the morning. It had been more than six and a half hours since Adam's shift had ended. Gansey had decided to give him until three before calling the police.

The obvious misery and exhaustion on Adam’s face as he came inside gave Gansey a moment’s hesitation. But then Adam’s face shifted as soon as his eyes found Gansey’s in the dim light. After a fleeting expression of surprise, Adam’s face closed itself into a distant, foreign thing. The anger Gansey had been fighting resurfaced, hotter than before.

Why was he, Gansey, always the villain in this story? Why did everything he do only fuel Adam’s disdain?

They had fought, earlier. Or whatever it was that passed for fighting between them, now. Whatever name you want to give to the silent sparking tension that danced in the space between every offer Gansey made and every rejection Adam shot it down with. Gansey hated the fact that for Adam he was, still and always, nothing but his money. His money and the ignorance it automatically painted him with.

This time money came in the form of an Uber.

Gansey had been making a habit of picking Adam up from work every day. He was the one who’d chosen to make a home out of a giant abandoned warehouse in a part of southwest Brooklyn that had never met a subway line. It seemed reasonable to him that he should mitigate the burden that this choice had unwittingly added to Adam’s already overburdened life.

Driving Adam to school was easy. Even Adam could accept a ride when they were so obviously leaving from and going to the exact same places. School to work, Adam took the subway. It was the last leg of the trip that required actual intervention.

Adam had silently accepted the help, much to Gansey’s relief. Gansey had gone so far as to stop making up reasons for how he happened to be driving around backwoods Queens just as Adam’s shift was ending. For his part, Adam had stopped hesitating before getting into the car. They’d reached some sort of equilibrium.

Until, inevitably, the day Gansey couldn’t make it. Which had been today. Helen had shown up unannounced, and had made a thousand plans for them. She threatened to buy a birthday gift for their mother alone if he didn’t come along. (That had not gone well last year, and was a situation worthy of prevention.) When he tried to explain about Adam, she’d breezily blown it off. Not the part about Adam needing a ride. Just the part about Gansey needing to the be one driving the car.

“Just call him an Uber. He won’t care.”

Gansey couldn’t explain that yes, Adam probably would care. He couldn’t explain it to Helen without explaining so many other things about Adam that he was pretty sure Adam would hate even more than the idea of an Uber. So, with Helen beside him, he’d reluctantly called Adam to let him know the new plan. To no one’s surprise but Helen’s, Adam had just bitten out the words “No fucking way Gansey,” and hung up. Helen had shrugged it off and taken him shopping.

Gansey tried to focus less on the fact that Adam had said _no_ , and more on the fact that he had said _Gansey_. Not Dick. Adam was the only one in the group who never called him Dick when they were angry. At least Adam’s irrational pride came with a scrupulous respect for other people’s boundaries too. But the rejection was still a rejection.

And then Adam hadn’t come home, and Gansey had been afraid. Then Adam came home, and Gansey’s fear shifted to anger. And that left him here, staring into Adam’s terrifyingly blank eyes at half past too fucking early in the morning for this.

Gansey tried to hold on to his conversation with Blue this afternoon. A million years ago. He’d called her when he got back from A Day with Helen, to find that Adam still wasn’t home.

Blue’s theory was that being angry with Adam for rejecting his help was like being angry with a foreign exchange student for not being fluent upon arriving in his host country. Gansey needed the analogy spelled out for him. Blue obligingly explained that she - and Gansey and Ronan and everyone else they knew, except Adam - had learned to let people comfort them in the same way they learned language, absorbing it automatically from their environment.

Adam might have been an academic genius, but he was utterly illiterate when it came to the concept of being comforted. He had no experience with someone who loved him offering to soothe away his hurts with a hug and a kiss to make it better. Or even just a verbal reassurance, that he would be ok. Living with Gansey was like taking a full immersion course, she explained, and Adam was still in the drowning phase of that kind of instruction.

The idea of it was so awful, it took Gansey a minute to understand what she was saying. Then the not-understanding switched so quickly to understanding that it seemed like a thing he had always known, a thing that must be so obvious as to not bear saying.

Awful things are like that. Unseen in plain sight, because seeing and understanding them is so terrible. None of the people in Adam’s orbit had seen it. Even Gansey, a boy who found secrets the way ravens find glittering objects to hoard. Until Blue had pointed it out to him.

He tried to look at Adam’s empty face through the lens of this new knowledge. But all he could see was a stranger. A boy who had seen Gansey, tried him out, and rejected him. Gansey knew this was unfair, but he felt it. He felt Adam’s new and growing strangeness as an assault.

The thing was, it hurt. To still be nothing to Adam beyond his money. And. Not that he wasn’t happy that Adam and Ronan seemed better these days. But. That hurt, too. That Ronan could be forgiven, despite his having been the one to create the situation. But Gansey couldn’t be forgiven for trying to make it more bearable. Gansey’s anger ascended, riding the tide of his rising hurt.

The anger was silenced again, though, an instant later, when Gansey’s sleep deprived brain finally put together the clues (close to seven hours since Adam’s shift must have ended; the dead smudges of exhaustion under Adam’s eyes; the tentative way Adam’s feet shifted in his soaked-through old sneakers; the rain dripping secretly from his hair down to his sodden shoulders, despite the fact that it was barely drizzling out) and realized that Adam must have walked home. Walked. Home. Walked. From Queens.

Before Gansey could even formulate a question (a demand, a plea) Adam shut him down. “Don’t, Gansey. Not now. I can’t.” His voice was empty.

Adam had chosen to walk twenty miles along a dark, fast highway in the cold rain, rather than accept Gansey’s help.

And this was agony. And this was unfair. And Gansey couldn’t stop himself from asking, hot and cold at the same time, “Why, Adam? Was I really so terrible?”

He had no idea what he meant, even as the words left his mouth. Nevertheless, it felt like the truest thing he’d said to Adam in a long, long time.

Adam just looked at him, hot and cold at the same time. “Not everything is about you, Gansey.” His voice was a little less empty, this time. Giving the words more weight as they hit Gansey and froze him solid.

Gansey allowed himself a moment to remain frozen. Then he looked at Adam, and he made himself let go of whatever it was he thought he was holding on to. Because Adam was only half there. Adam had spoken more in absence than in actual anger.

Everything else Gansey felt was blown away by this sudden awareness of Adam’s absence, and the twist of loss it left in its wake. He’d lost Ronan, once. He’d been finding him ever since. He was losing Adam, now. But he would find him again. Gansey’s life was a quest, and his friends were the grail.

Adam seemed to hear the cruelty of his own words with a five second delay. His face flushed in shame. He looked down. He should apologize, but he couldn’t. There wasn’t enough of him left. Darkness flickered at the edge of his vision.

Somehow Gansey had moved, while Adam’s eyes had been looking away. Reality was shifting too strangely around him. Adam was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be able to stay standing much longer. _Not here_ , he begged. _Not now_. He couldn’t fall. Not where he could be seen.

When Adam looked up again, Gansey was even closer. Gansey’s face had an uncertain smile on it. Gansey’s fist was raised. Not like the other fists in Adam’s life. Not waiting to hit, but waiting to be bumped.

Adam’s face managed a smile. Adam’s elbow managed to bend, his wrist to straighten, his fingers to curl, his shoulder to swing the whole apparatus forward just enough to meet Gansey’s waiting fist gently.

They bumped.

It was ok.

Nothing was ok.

They were ok.

As long as there was still a thin sheet of reality along which they could meet, they were ok. They could exist in the space defined by the outlines of their hands, the space between their knuckles where their fingers aligned and touched. A whole world could be pulled from even the most slender filament. Gansey swore to himself that would always find that strand of connection, no matter how deeply it was buried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know how, sometimes, when you’re writing fanfiction, you’re working things out? Your own things. Or the characters’ things. Or the story’s things. Sometimes, the thing you are working out is how something in the original didn’t ring true, to your own inner truth. Or something seemed too easy, or it seemed that the way reality had been shifted aside for the story didn’t lie quite straight. For me, some of that was Adam pressing charges, and the scene in the courtroom. For me, some of that was about the fact that there is no reality in which a minor runs away from home and presses criminal charges against his parents in the U.S. without child protective services getting involved. So I shifted the story’s reality a little bit over, again. In my version, Adam doesn’t press criminal charges, for the reasons I have him explain above. Instead of the court case being about criminal charges, when it comes, it will be about a bid for emancipation. (Another small side effect of this shift is that Adam turns 18 the summer after his senior year, not the summer before. This is not a plot-relevant detail, but it eats at me when I write a version of these notes that leaves it out, so there it is.)


	9. In form as palpable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When you are emptied of everything, you are left with nothing but form. When a strong spirit is what the form has lost, that spirit leaves a mark. A palpable sense of what has been lost; a palpable assurance that it cannot remain lost. The ghost is as strong as the thing itself. Sometimes the ghost of the self-that-might-be is the only form there has ever been.

There are three kinds of broken.

One is the state of a thing that had once been whole, but will never be so again. A vase, swept off the table in a flash of rage, its inner surface suddenly exposed to the light. With care, it might be puzzled back together, but the seams remain. It is apparent to a careful observer that the vase is diminished; it is apparent, most of all, to the vase itself.

That was Ronan Lynch’s kind of broken.

The second is the state of a thing that has been so thoroughly destroyed, it re-forms itself into an entirely new kind of whole. The living wood of ancient forests, remade as stone beneath the stifling pressure of eternity. Beautiful, indestructible, shockingly heavy. Sand, heated beyond endurance, emerging as glass. Clear, strong, deadly.

That was Mr. Gray’s kind of broken.

The third kind of broken (can it still be called broken?) is the state of a thing that had never been whole to start with. Or perhaps, the state of a thing whose breaking began at the same moment that it came into being. A thing for which existence and destruction cannot be distinguished.

Unlike the other two kinds of broken, this third one does not betray the identity of the thing itself. It has no state from which it is diminished. It has no state into which it evolves. It is always itself. In that way, it retains a grim dignity, authentic to itself.

That was Adam Parrish’s kind of broken.

The first kind of broken was of no interest to Mr. Gray. Perhaps because it was so pedestrian; perhaps because he had so often been the tool with which it was accomplished.

The second kind of broken was of no interest to him either, in the way that one’s own reflection ceases to be interesting.

But the third kind of broken. That was a puzzle that fascinated him. Was it a true state? Was it genuinely distinct from the other two? Could something exist in a relentless state of brokenness? Could an unflinching knowledge of its own state lend such brokenness a form of grace?

Perhaps this is why Mr. Gray found Adam Parrish so compelling. Enough to have followed Adam periodically after his existence crossed that of Ronan Lynch, and thus, by extension, of Mr. Gray himself.

More likely, it was simple professional instinct to keep an eye on all events and people that were linked to past assignments.

Regardless of why, it had certainly been the case that Ronan had led him to Adam and Adam had led him to Boyd’s, just at a moment when Mr. Gray was in need of a mechanic.

A good mechanic. Who, in addition to being good, could be counted upon to raise neither alarms nor eyebrows in the presence of men paying in cash and driving vehicles with implausible VIN numbers.

Mr. Gray was, at this moment, kindly disposed toward Adam. Adam had made the requested alterations and repairs so quickly that Mr. Gray would be free to return the Champagne Monstrosity to the rental office a week earlier than he’d anticipated.

Mr. Gray had arrived at the garage that evening to pick up his newly serviceable car. He was thirty seconds from pulling into the lot, but habit had him pause and observe before making himself known.

(Perhaps this was another reason Mr. Gray was so interested in Adam Parrish. Any similarity between them provided an argument against the assertion that the third form of brokenness was truly different from the second. Time would tell. Mr. Gray was a patient man. In that, he was unlike any of them.)

That night, Mr. Gray watched the scene before him unfold. He observed the way Adam’s shoulders failed to do the same. They remained hunched long after the belligerent exit of the rather large man who had caused those shoulders to fall in on themselves in the first place. Mr. Gray decided he could tolerate the Champagne Disaster for a little longer. He pulled back onto the road unseen, dialing Persephone’s number as he drove.

=====

The day after his father’s surprise visit was Saturday, and Adam let Gansey drive him to work without protest. Adam was quiet. But Adam was often quiet, and Gansey had no idea whether the palpable lingering unease was truly shared.

More likely, Gansey thought, it belonged to him alone. Adam had already retreated into the polite blankness that he pulled over himself, smooth and quick, after whatever violent misery had most recently visited him. Gansey didn’t know if anything real remained below that surface. The time when he might have asked had long since passed.

Adam’s eyes were open. But he was utterly still; still as death, or its brother, sleep. A state that blocked any attempt to breach it. Gansey’s skin itched.

To his surprise, when they pulled up to the garage, Adam turned to him. Adam’s eyes held on to their disturbing blankness for only a second before he blinked, and they refocused. Then, Adam sighed. Gansey knew that soft exhale for what it was, a declaration of Adam’s decision to engage, rather than retreat. Gansey understood, and held his breath, waiting.

Adam hated the caution he saw painted so clearly across Gansey’s face. He hated the way his friends tiptoed around him. He hated even more that their caution was justified, fully justified, by the ugliness of his own temper.

Adam still didn’t understand that it wasn’t his anger that Gansey dreaded, but his withdrawal.

Adam’s shoulders remained set and his face still screamed a warning to tread carefully, but he forced himself to look directly at Gansey and offer the only thing he truly owned: his secrets.

“My father was here yesterday, at the garage. He came to tell Boyd to send my paycheck directly to him. Turns out, that’s the law, since I’m still a minor.” Adam’s wry smile seemed out of place as he spoke, but it refused to abandon him.

Gansey was perfectly aware of what it cost Adam to tell him this. He wanted to do his part to honor the sacrifice it represented, this freely offered piece of hell. He knew that at the very least, doing his part meant not reacting with outrage, or even worse, with compassion.

Nevertheless, it was hard to keep the shock from showing on his face, followed quickly by anger. Luckily, Gansey grew up as the favored prince of a political dynasty, and his power to mask his feelings rivaled even Adam’s. So it took him only a breath to collect himself.

Being aware of what not to do wasn’t in the least bit helpful in terms of knowing what he should do, though. Gansey settled on nodding, a shallow acknowledgement of information exchanged, with no commitment or request for further engagement.

That seemed to be the right call. Adam nodded back, the rueful ghost of a smile flickering quickly across his features, lighting them suddenly before fading. He spoke again, softer this time.

“I know you already researched the hell out of emancipation. I guess I’m ready to hear about it.”

Gansey had never mentioned the lawyer he’d hired all those months ago, or the paperwork he’d had them start drawing up. But he wasn’t surprised that Adam knew anyway. Adam was, after all, very smart. And Gansey was, after all, very predictable.

Gansey allowed himself a smile this time in addition to a nod, and even threw in a firm “Ok, then. Tonight?” Adam initiated the fist bump this time, a promise to stay connected, before finally climbing out of the car.

Something felt new, hopeful.

Gansey was aware that this was not a wholly appropriate response to Adam’s obvious misery. But knowing that Adam hadn’t fully rejected him felt good, and having a clear path and permission to help felt even better.

Gansey wondered if this was what Adam meant about him liking to have all his things neatly in one place. He would have to ask Blue.

=====

Adam was surprised to see a cloud of white-blond hair waiting when he emerged after getting changed into coveralls. A garage seemed the least likely place to encounter Persephone that he could think of. Persephone belonged with Blue. She belonged with sound and color and warmth and motion, in the ramshackle brownstone she shared with Blue’s mom and cousins and other aunts.

His confusion cleared a little when Persephone silently handed him the paperwork for Mr. Gray’s car. He vaguely remembered knowing that Mr. Gray and Maura were together. Since that relationship had started just about when his and Blue’s ended, he was hazy on the details.

So Adam knew that it wasn’t _completely_ implausible that Persephone was here running an errand for Mr. Gray, but he was suspicious. He was also unfailingly polite, so instead of the questions he wanted to ask, he settled for a quiet “Thank you, ma’am,” as she passed him the paperwork.

“We need to talk,” she said inexplicably a few minutes later, when Adam drove the car around to the front for her to take home.

She got in the passenger seat, and shook her head when Adam started to open the driver’s side door and exit the car. “You should drive,” she stated, as though this made all the sense in the world.

Adam’s polite mind wasn’t sure how to formulate a response. To be fair, Persephone often had that effect on people. Persephone sat, unconcerned and relaxed, as the silence stretched.

Adam was distinctly uncomfortable. The silence wore down his reticence, and he finally said, firmly, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I need to go back to work now.”

Persephone just looked at him. “You’ll change your mind, like or not. I’ll wait for you. I’ve made pie.” This incomprehensible string of statements was apparently all she was going to offer. Adam waited another moment, and then got out of the car, uneasy. Something seemed to be wrong with Persephone, but Adam couldn’t see anything more he could do for her himself.

Decisive, he went inside to call Blue, though he wasn’t sure what exactly he would tell her. Blue was perfectly aware of how eccentric Persephone was, and equally committed to the theory that her aunt could handle herself. Blue would almost certainly refuse to come to the garage to pick up Persephone and make sure she wasn’t having a psychotic break of some sort. It seemed wrong not to try, though. So Adam called.

“Mom says you should drive Persephone home” Blue said, immediately upon answering the phone. “She hates driving.” Adam didn’t miss the fact that he hadn’t needed to explain the situation. In fact, Blue had answered the phone before it had even rung once on Adam’s end, as if she’d known he was going to call. Which she probably did; her family was like that.

Adam’s extreme politeness only extended to people who were at least two decades older than him. So he didn’t try to hide the irritation in his voice when he replied. “What the fuck, Blue? You know I can’t do that.”

Blue ignored him in favor of having a whispered conversation with someone Adam couldn’t quite hear. Her voice came back on the line, unrepentant. “Calla says not to take Boyd to heart, and that Persephone made pie.”

Adam closed his eyes in frustration. Before he could figure out what to say, he heard a quiet cough behind him. The sound of Boyd trying to get his attention. This call had already taken too long.

“I’ve got to go, Blue. Just,” Adam wasn’t sure how to even finish the sentence. Blue saved him from having to figure it out by ending the conversation on her own terms.

“I know, Adam. Ok. Look, be nice to yourself, ok? And I’ll see you when you bring Persephone.” She hung up before he could choke out a response. Which was probably just as well, because it was unlikely to have been polite. And Boyd was still standing silently behind him. Adam hung up the phone, and turned around, an apology on his lips. For making calls during work hours, for taking so long to bring Persephone the car, for his father’s threats, for his whole life. He didn’t know.

He had been prepared to apologize, but he was completely unprepared when Boyd said, gruff and a little embarrassed, “I think you’d best go.” Boyd couldn’t quite look him in the eye as he spoke. The words were like being punched in the stomach and falling off a ladder all at once. Adam thought he was going to throw up.

Before he could formulate a response, a question, a protest, Boyd shook his head slightly. “After yesterday. There’s no good can come of you staying here. I don’t want any trouble. You’d best go.” And he turned and walked into the back office. He didn’t offer to pay Adam for the hours he’d worked since his last paycheck. He wouldn’t cross Robert Parrish. He left, and Adam was alone.

Adam stood, shaking, trying to formulate strategies, to plan the possible next steps in his head. But his mind, usually a reliable source of rational thought and carefully made plans, refused to cooperate. Adam tried to tell himself reassuring things, over the growing roar of white noise. This was ok, he tried to say. He knew he’d have to find a new job soon anyway, he tried to think. This just made the question of “when” a bit clearer.

But the shaking was traveling from his hands now, up his arm, down his body, and nearing his knees. He’d thought he had some time. He thought he had time to work out the paperwork, keep his checks, keep on moving steadily ahead. But suddenly, he was cut loose. Or maybe, the threadbare rope he’d been holding to just turned out to be much shorter than he’d thought.

A noise cut through his rising panic. A car horn, honking. Adam slowly came back to himself. He walked back outside to see Persephone leaning over the console and poking at the horn experimentally, as if studying its acoustic properties rather than trying to get his attention.

Which, it turned out, was just what she was doing. She showed no impatience when Adam turned back around and went back inside. She showed no surprise when Adam, his coveralls exchanged for street clothes and his bookbag gripped in his still-shaking hand, climbed into the driver’s seat.

She showed no awareness that the conversation was one sided as she chatted about her PhD in musicology and how the horn made her wonder about expanding her thesis to look at the way music merges with and emerges from technology. (Chatting, for Persephone, consisted of short strange pronouncements interspersed with long comfortable silences.)

Adam found himself strangely soothed, as though from a distance. His arms replied with a turn of the wheel on those occasions when Persephone’s statements were directions rather than music theory. The miles drifted below the tires. As Adam directed the car along the same path he’d walked by foot only the night before, it felt as if something were being sealed over. His breath evened out, his body stopped trembling, and a strange quiet took hold.

When they passed the exit they should have taken to get to Blue’s house, Adam’s caution began to return, too. By the time they’d pulled up in front of an overly cute bakery in an overly cute neighborhood populated by overly cute children being led around by overly cute parents, he was only slightly less vigilant than his usual state.

So, when Persephone made her offer, he noticed it, despite it being phrased in the same vague theoretical tone as her ideas about how the movement of sound waves in cities differed from their movement in forests.

“This is the bakery. You would live in the apartment above it.” Persephone spoke as though Adam should know what she was talking about. Adam just stared at her, unwilling to break the silence within himself. Persephone responded to his silence with uncharacteristic volubility (but characteristic jumps in logic and absence of transitions between thoughts).

“I have had to wait an age to find someone for my bakery. Now I can work on music. Because of my PhD, and all the _time_. I’ll pay you, you’ll run it. Everything except the pie, the pie wouldn’t do. I need you early, to start up the ovens. And take deliveries, of course. You are able to be early, I know. Late too, because of people, after work. In between, I’m here. So I need early, late, but not between. And then there’s the fact that I can pay only part in money. Part has to be a place to live, and food. It has been impossible to find you. It has to be someone who can be early and late and needs a place to live, and food.”

The last sentence broke the spell, with its vicious reminder that he was a person who needed charity just to eat and sleep. Adam’s politeness held, but only just, and he was aware that he was disintegrating from within. “Thank you, ma’am,” he managed. “I don’t know what Blue said to you, but I am fine. I don’t need-”

Persephone, who had never pretended at politeness, interrupted him. “Adam. It’s your choice. No matter what else, you are going to have to make some choice, now. This is one of the paths. You don’t need to choose it. Remember, though, that when a situation gives you what you need, that doesn’t mean that taking it is accepting an unearned gift. Valuing yourself appropriately doesn’t need to mean suffering. Perhaps you don’t feel you’ve yet suffered enough, but still, you don’t have to let suffering define the right choices. You own the choice. The choice need not own you. There are very few people like you, Adam. Like I said, I’ve waited an age. We’ll go home now, if you like, and you can talk to Blue.”


	10. As this which now I draw

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting toward the end of the soliloquy now. This is the first moment that Macbeth even tries to reach out for reality. To hold on to something familiar and real. To draw something out. Is he drawing a dream out of nothing? Or drawing a real object out of the dream world? And does the distinction matter? Does it even exist? Regardless, we are reminded that there is a reality somewhere, if only we dare reach for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: shitty memories

Adam collapsed onto the small armchair in the corner of his room (even now, all these weeks after moving in, Adam still felt a small thrill every time he thought the word “ _mine_ ”) and gingerly rolled up the left leg of his pants. Sure enough, a bruise was starting to bloom, blue and menacing.

Adam felt his stomach turn over. It was terrifying to see his skin marked by blunt force, even when he knew perfectly well that this time he really had just fallen down.

He had tripped on the stairs running to class that morning, and managed to seriously slam his leg into the edge of the landing.

It had fucking hurt. A lot.

Not that anyone who witnessed the fall would have known. Lifelong habit took over immediately, even though the silence wasn’t necessary anymore. Adam had swallowed any sound his body wanted to make, and picked himself up. Silent and still-faced, he kept going. Up the rest of the stairs, down the hall, to class, and then from class to class, unwavering.

Adam ignored the stab of pain in his leg all day, without even knowing he was ignoring something. Instead of the pain, he felt haunted and sick. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t talk. He ignored the worried look Gansey shot him in class. By the end of the day, Adam was ragged, without having the least fucking clue as to why.

He’d biked back home as quickly as he could after his last class, even though Persephone didn’t need him until 6. The quiet familiarity of the rhythmic action of legs and gears and wheels freed his mind to wander. He could feel the pain in his leg with every movement of his feet on the pedals.

He was startled to realize that it was the pain that had caused the rest of the day to go to hell. Just pain.

It had been a long time now since anything had hurt Adam; he’d grown used to the sense of being whole and safe. He’d had no idea that the terror of his old reality was still there, waiting at the edges, ready for the first sign that things might not have changed, after all. And now the terror was back, already creeping across his boundaries, seductive and familiar.

Fuck that. The fear wouldn’t own him. He wouldn’t let it. He would break it down, he would cast it away. He would deal with it when he got home.

Home. He could deal with it at home. He had an actual home, a place of his own, and though it was tiny, it was perfect. In fact, everything about working in Persephone’s bizarre forest-themed Brooklyn bakery had been working out better than he could have hoped, now that he’d agreed to work for her.

Time and comfort had made it harder and harder to remember what had driven him to fight her offer so hard to begin with. Adam had started to understand his friends in a way he never had been able to before. He could see, now, what a mystery he had been to them. He was starting to be a mystery to himself.

Back when every fiber of his meagre existence was focused on building toward a future in which he was safe and whole and free, Adam somehow hadn’t made the connection. By definition, reaching that future required leaving behind the person who was building it, the Adam who lived every day with hunger and exhaustion and fear.

Adam hadn’t quite reached that future, yet. But he was closer, close enough to have already passed some threshold into the world of the well-fed and well-slept, the world that the rest of his friends came from.

Their world worked by different rules, and Adam was only just starting to understand them. In this world, connection didn’t mean pain. In this world, the absence of pain didn’t mean tricks or charity. In this world, sometimes things just worked out. Things like good jobs that were easy and pleasant to do, that paid enough to eat as much as he wanted and still leave time over for sleeping.

This was his world now. And, though he was still struggling to accept that he had a genuine place in it, Adam wasn’t going to let one shitty day take it from him. The old terror might be trying to draw him back out, but he was going to get a hold of himself and understand what the fuck was going on.

Now, with his door ( _mine_ ) closed and locked, his windows ( _mine_ ) closed and draped, his chair ( _mine_ ) comfortable and solid beneath him, Adam slowly let out his breath and tried to take the fear apart, the way Persephone had taught him.

It eluded him.

He reminded himself not to try to hold on quite so tightly. He made himself give up for a minute; he walked to his little fridge ( _mine_ ) and cut himself a piece of pie (apple rhubarb, today). He still wasn’t hungry, but Persephone had infinite faith in the power of pie, and he saw no reason to face the inner truths of himself without it.

Thus armed, Adam sat back down. He closed himself in. He rested his elbows on his thighs, forming a little bowl with his hands over his knees, and rested his head against the rim. He kept his eyes open in the circle of dark he drew for himself; he felt his breath move in and out. He concentrated on the weight of head on hands and hands on knees and knees on legs and legs on feet and feet on ground.

Thus grounded, he let go and listened to his body. Persephone had taught him that his body was his ( _mine_ ), not the other way around. He could heed it without getting lost.

Adam stopped blocking out the pain in his leg. He let the terror and nausea wash over him, pulled along behind the pain like a snagged bit of string.

Oh. That was interesting.

Quietly, Adam started to let himself feel the full force of pain along his bones and skin. As he stopped blocking it out, the terror eased, and the nausea.

Adam took a bite of pie.

He looked at the pain from outside, and willed it to remain limited to this time and place. He held fast to one thought until it was made true: this pain was not a smaller part of a larger agony that would overtake him again.

It hurt. Pain always did. It always worked. But this pain was his ( _mine_ ), and it was not preceded or followed by more pain. It was no longer a state he was resigned to, no longer a state he could only bear by covering it up with his mind and with his clothes.

An absurd realization came to him: that he was going to have to learn about pain all over again, in this strange new world he finally inhabited, where no one hurt him.

He laughed, slightly hysterically, and stopped himself with another bite of pie. Another puzzle piece had just slipped into place. A new understanding of his friends. Or maybe just of Gansey.

Past-Adam, in his bone deep knowledge of the inescapable inevitability of pain, had been unable to feel anything but frustration and miserable anger with Gansey for his blind insistence on trying to stave it off. Present-Adam was now newly aware of how pain looked from this angle, from the viewpoint of a person for whom pain was not the natural order of things. From this vantage point, not doing everything you could to evade pain seemed pointlessly stubborn. Just as he must have always seemed to Gansey. Adam kept looking into the darkness of himself, waiting for the uncomfortable sense of existing at two times to settle.

Adam didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there, moving through layers of self-time. He was snapped out of his growing fugue by a knock.

Ronan had come knocking earlier in the day than usual. Adam had no time to wonder about the strangeness of it. He scrambled to pull himself together. Ronan was about to walk in, and when he did, he would see a bruised boy, pale and hungry.

A sickening déjà vu swept over Adam. He instinctively rolled his pant leg back down to hide the bruise. There was nothing to be ashamed of; he knew this. But there never had been, and that had never mattered. It still didn’t. He still felt raw under Ronan’s scrutiny.

But no, it was all in his head. Ronan was already inside, had already swept the door shut without a second glance (though Adam could have sworn he’d felt the pressure of Ronan’s gaze shudder down the full length of his body). Ronan was now at the wall that served as Adam’s kitchen ( _mine_ ), dumping take-out bags of food thoughtlessly across the counter one-handed while he held his coat strangely half-closed with the other.

“Come on in,” Adam called out, dry. “Make yourself at home.”

Adam intended it to be sarcastic, hostile; but his own words warmed him. His face released the lost, pinched look it had taken on ever since his fall that morning.

Adam had a home, and Ronan was in it.

This was not an unusual occurrence. To Adams’s unexamined but profound relief, Ronan had kept up the pattern of knocking on Adam’s door. Ronan still came by at random times most evenings, despite the fact that Adam’s door was no longer four short steps down the hall from Ronan’s.

“Fuck you, asshole,” Ronan replied cheerfully. He added, unnecessarily, “I brought food.”

Adam hardly even felt the flare of anger that usually accompanied such declarations. He was getting better at this. He was feeling better than he had all day.

Not better enough for his silence to go unnoticed, though. Ronan turned to look at him, one arm still held strangely around himself. “What the fuck are you doing in that chair?” he asked suspiciously, finally noticing that something was off.

Adam was surprised by the question. Not because it was unwarranted; Adam never sat in the armchair. He was too used having nothing but a bed and a floor. But there was no way Ronan could have known this about him; it was an internal state, hidden. Adam discovered with some trepidation that he was wrong. Ronan knew. Because Ronan watched him incessantly, and remembered every pointless detail.

Adam just stared at him, not taking the bait. “I live here.”

“Fine. Be an asshole.” Ronan flipped him off and sat down on the floor instead, gingerly removing something from within his coat. To Adam’s horror, the thing moved. A strange protrusion that turned out to be a nose twitched. From the opposite end, something wagged. A tail.

What. The. Fuck.

“Lynch,” snapped Adam, finally startled out of the chair. “Please tell me that is not a dog.”

“It’s not a dog,” Ronan replied obediently. “It’s a motherfucking puppy. Can’t you tell the difference?”

Adam sighed and moved to sit cross-legged across from Ronan, the bruise making him wince. He avoided Ronan’s eyes. “Why the fuck is there a puppy in my apartment?” he asked, struggling for patience.

Ronan raised an eyebrow at him. “Because I was on my way here when I found her.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “Sure. That makes sense. Of course.”

Ronan was ignoring him, intent on rubbing his nose gently against the puppy’s. In Ronan’s mind, though, he was considering whether this might have been a bad miscalculation after all. His answer was completely truthful, but also incomplete. He had found the puppy, yes; just not for the first time. And he’d been on his way to Adam’s, true, but then made several detours. To get more food, because he was pretty sure puppies couldn’t eat spicy thai food or chocolate donuts.

Fuck it. Every fucking thing he’d done with regard to Adam Parrish had been a fucking miscalculation from the beginning. No point in starting to worry about it now.

Adam was supposed to have been a perfectly safe person to have a crush on. Ronan wasn’t completely in touch with his inner self or whatever, but he knew some things. Ronan knew that when he felt things, the aftermath was a tidal wave over quicksand. So Ronan decided that he would only entertain crushes on two conditions: he had to be certain that he’d never feel anything dangerously sweet or warm toward the other person, and he had to be certain that the person would not reciprocate even if he did.

And Ronan had been absolutely certain about Adam. First, that he wouldn’t reciprocate. Not because his sexuality; Ronan knew he’d dated Blue, but he could always be bi. But Adam always held himself away from the people and events around him; his disdain was legend.

Ronan was still on the fence about whether he’d been right about this part.

But he’d been dead wrong about the other condition. He’d never expected the arrogant stubborn uptight pain in the ass hanger-on that Gansey had acquired to somehow become a person he loved. Ronan didn’t shy away from the word in his head. What was the point? He didn’t like to lie. Not to other people, and not to himself.

It shouldn’t have happened, but it had. Slowly at first, so he hadn’t noticed; and then suddenly, so he couldn’t back away.

Their relationship initially consisted of Ronan picking fights with Adam. It was too easy, which sucked; Adam was fucking predictable. Try to give him something, and voila: a fight! But it still was pretty gratifying, because Adam was so secure in his wrongheadedness. He never backed down. Ronan liked that.

He should’ve backed away the day he discovered that Adam was being hurt, and that he, Ronan, couldn’t stand it. That should’ve been a clue; it should’ve been a fucking beacon of warning. Gansey had tried warning him, though it was for different reasons. Gansey reasons.

But Ronan knew plenty of kids who got slapped around by their parents. The world was full of pieces of shit with kids, and the society of Aglionby was no exception. It had never affected him before. Ronan could drive Adam home. There wouldn’t be consequences.

Ronan had told Gansey that night that he wasn’t an idiot.

He was such a fucking idiot.

He still might have gotten away before his feelings turned irretrievably. But then, Adam had taken him to a fucking beach at the end of fucking nowhere, speeding and drinking his birthday into oblivion, and Ronan was finished.

After that night, Ronan knew it was love. But at least Ronan could still hold on to the fact that Adam didn’t reciprocate.

And so, spending time with Adam had become the same as driving too fast or drinking too much. It was dangerous, exhilarating, freeing. Dancing along the edge of destruction was the best way to avoid worrying about being destroyed.

So what was one more miscalculation on top of that shitpile of stupidity?

Ronan didn’t know why today, when he walked by the puppy he’d noticed a few times in an abandoned lot near Monmouth, he decided to pick it up. He just did, and now it was done, and he wasn’t going to undo it. Now he was committed, and as with everything Ronan did, it was all or nothing. He was going to rescue the hell out of this puppy, until it was the happiest puppy in the fucking history of puppies.

The puppy licked him happily and barked, a tiny squeaking sound that Ronan interpreted as hunger.

“Here, you hold her,” he ordered, holding the little brown mop of a thing out to Adam. Adam kept his arms stubbornly folded across his chest. Ronan huffed. “Listen, shithead, I have to look up what she eats. I brought a few different things because I don’t know. Take the goddamn puppy so I can find my fucking phone.”

Reluctantly, Adam took the puppy from Ronan. “Oh, so the food is for the dog. Nice, Lynch.” Ronan ignored him, again.

The puppy dangled uncomfortably from Adam’s stiff hands, which he was holding as far from his body as possible. It made a pathetic mewling noise, and Ronan looked up sharply.

“For fuck’s sake, Adam, what the hell is your problem?” Ronan demanded. He threw the phone into Adam’s lap and rescued the frantic bundle of fur. “What do you have against puppies? Fine. You look up what she needs to eat. I’m going to wash her.”

“You are cleaning out the fucking tub afterwards,” Adam grumbled to his retreating back, taking Ronan’s phone. As he obediently researched what to feed stray puppies, he tried not to think too hard about Ronan’s question. Which hadn’t even been a question, more an insult. Because no one hates puppies. Except, as Adam was all too aware, he did. He disliked puppies. And kittens. And dogs, and cats, and just pets in general.

Like everything else with its roots in the helpless misery of his childhood, the truth of it was humiliating to Adam. The humiliation was doubled in this case, though. Because what he disliked about the ubiquitous non-human objects of unconditional love, was the humiliation of knowing how much less he was than them. How unloved, unfed, untouched and uncared for he, Adam, was, compared with the pets he saw everywhere. Being walked in the park, petted in stores, talked about by classmates.

It was one thing to know how inferior he was to every other child he encountered. It was unbearable to contemplate pets.

For the most part, he didn’t have to think about it. He had no friends with pets. He had no friends, actually.

But there had been times he was forced to confront it. Adam remembered being small and hungry, waiting in line at the grocery store beside his mother. One afternoon, he had looked over to the woman in the next aisle. His mind, even when he was small, couldn’t help itself from working. He immediately started to catalogue the differences: His mother was clenching his hand uncomfortably tightly in her own. The woman one aisle over had her dog held snug and gentle against her side. His mother’s shopping cart had two six packs of beer, a tube of toothpaste, and three Lipton cup-o-soups. The woman one aisle over had a cart filled with dog food and cat food and dog treats and cat treats. And two six packs of beer, too.

There were other times. One time in the park, when a horrified jogger called the police on a guy who had his dog running alongside as he biked. The dog’s leash was tied to the body of the guy’s bike, and the woman stood in front of the bike to force it to stop as she yelled at the rider for endangering his dog. Adam, watching, had thought back to countless times, in stores and on sidewalks and in parks, when his mother had slapped him for disobeying and hissed at him violently to “just wait until your father gets home,” while everyone around them looked away in embarrassment and discomfort. But they would make a scene and stop traffic for a dog.

One of Adam’s first fights with Blue had been about some student thing she was trying to organize in support of an animal rescue shelter where she volunteered. He couldn’t (wouldn’t) explain why he wanted no part in it. She, understandably, had been angry and hurt at his rejection. He’d never explained himself to her, even now. He was pretty sure she’d never figured it out, either, even now.

This cheery train of thoughts was interrupted by the return of Ronan. He was holding the little mop of fur in one of Adam’s towels, scowling. “You need better fucking towels, asshole. But I thought of a perfect name for her. I’m going to name her after you. Orphan Girl.”

“Ha fucking ha.” Adam feigned annoyance, but the truth is that Ronan’s teasing mockery was the only response he didn’t hate. It was utterly devoid of pity or condescension, and left no room for hiding or wallowing. Cruelty was, counterintuitively, the most respectful form of acknowledgment. At least, Ronan’s brand of cruelty, which was only a thin layer over the fierce loyalty at the heart of Ronan’s actual feelings.

Thinking back to the earliest days of their acquaintance, Adam couldn’t recall how he’d initially felt about the teasing. He remembered being angry, but not wounded. It had always been so much less damaging than Gansey’s earnest offers of help, even back when Adam couldn’t have known that Ronan’s biting attacks masked affection. Actually, Adam couldn’t be sure now that they had, back then. Ronan was as much of a moving target as he was, when it came to things like feelings.

Still, Adam knew enough to react with annoyance. He settled on throwing Ronan’s phone at him. Of course the asshole just caught it effortlessly with one hand while letting the puppy down to the floor gently with the other. Adam had known this would happen; he would never have risked breaking something so valuable, even if Ronan hated the thing.

Ronan scrolled through the websites Adam had bookmarked for him, separating out the puppy-friendly foods on the counter. Hamburgers, yes; chocolate, no. French fries, not advised.

Meanwhile Adam relented enough to let the puppy (he was not going to fucking call her Orphan Girl) sniff his hand. Despite himself, he was drawn in by the tiny pink tongue and little wet nose and ridiculously large paws and droopy ears. He lifted her up (she was apparently 95% fur, he decided, judging by her weight, or lack thereof) and consented to let her lick his face enthusiastically.

He got up, cradling the puppy carefully now, and walked over to join Ronan and the strange buffet he’d assembled; food for canines and humans to share laid out on the small table, and foods for humans only on the counter. Adam didn’t know whether he was appalled that Ronan was feeding the dog expensive human food, or impressed by the way this allowed Ronan to buy food while remaining ignorant of puppy eating habits, without the potential for waste.

By now, the puppy had taken up residence in Adams arms, and wasn’t interested in moving an inch. Ronan grumbled, but could hardly blame her. So he hand-fed her scraps of food, while Adam absently stroked the fur behind her ears. She was delighted by the attention and by the food, and enthusiastically licked Ronan’s fingers clean.

Ronan was alarmingly tempted to twine his fingers through Adam's, to lean a little closer over the breathing (and now sleeping) bundle of heat connecting them, and cover Adam’s soft red lips (now adorably twisted into a rueful smile aimed at the creature who’d taken over his arms and now fallen fast asleep in them) with his own.

He didn’t.

Instead, Ronan gently extricated the sleeping puppy, as Adam glanced anxiously at the clock. Ronan noticed Adam’s eyes surveying the giant mess they’d made, calculated the time it would take to clean it all up before he had to leave for work.

Ronan heard the sound of Adam’s stomach protesting at the smell of so much food. They'd been feeding the puppy, but not actually eating. Adam's hands were unavailable for feeding himself, anyway, as he was still holding the puppy, 

Ronan frowned. It was unusual these days for Adam to seem this frantic, or to be this noticeably hungry. Adam was also avoiding his gaze again.

“What time do you have to work?” was the question Ronan decided was safe enough to ask. He was, meanwhile, arranging Orphan Girl (he could admit it was a shitty name; he’d come up with something better tomorrow) on the cushion of the soft chair that Adam had inexplicably been sitting in when he arrived (and fuck, so maybe he shouldn’t actually be putting the puppy to sleep here, if Adam had finally decided to consider himself worthy of sitting on his own fucking chair; but it was too late to change course now, so fuck it).

“Six.” Adams voice sounded oddly flat, but it might have just been the water muffling it. Adam was carefully washing his hands, scrubbing each finger as if he’d just been rebuilding a rusty engine, not holding a freshly washed puppy. Ronan didn’t bother holding back a snort.

“Well if you’re finished with your nuclear grade decontamination there, let’s eat the rest of this shit before it gets cold and nasty.”

Adam glanced again at the clock, at his book bag, and at the mess strewn across every horizontal surface in sight.

“Don’t worry, puppy hater, I’ll clean up the offending evidence of adorableness before you get back.” Ronan punctuated this promise by stuffing a full sticky bun in his mouth. Adam looked gratifyingly disgusted, but at least he gave up on cleaning and sat down to eat.

Adam had eight minutes to get to work. Somehow Ronan and (what the fuck was he supposed to call the thing, he couldn’t keep saying “the puppy” but he sure as shit wasn’t going to call it “orphan girl”) had eaten up two and a half hours of his afternoon.

Luckily it took approximately forty seconds to get to work, since he lived upstairs. Not having any commute meant he could basically work full time and still get his schoolwork done, but not if he spent his afternoons caring for stray animals.

Adam held in his annoyance. It had been really nice, actually. Holding whatever-its-name-was. Watching Ronan drop all pretense of roughness in the face of the little creature. Adam was just unsettled, that was all. He didn’t want Ronan to notice his shakiness. He didn’t want to be shaky.

Once he ate, he realized he was actually fine. Better than fine. Adam felt calm, in control, despite the chaos in the apartment. He knew Ronan didn’t lie. The mess would be gone before Adam got back.

Adam had won today. He had deconstructed his fear, focused on the wellbeing of something outside himself, and eaten dinner. He was heading to work, and there was no way Robert could find him, and when he was done he’d come back to a place that was his, alone. With doors that locked and actual furniture and cabinets with cans and boxes and jars of food that would be waiting for him.

Ronan cleaned up while Orphan Girl slept and Adam worked. You could be a person who enjoyed crashing cars and still be a person who enjoyed returning a disordered space to order. At least, you could if you were Ronan. And he was.

The problem with cleaning, as opposed to racing or crashing, was that it left quiet space for your mind to wander. So Ronan didn’t often do it. Tonight was an exception. He found himself thinking back to the strangeness of the moments after he’d first arrived. Adam sitting in that fucking chair, looking weirdly guilty and defiant. Wincing when he sat down.

What the fuck ever. Adam could handle himself. He didn’t need looking after. Sure, he had shitty judgment sometimes. Like going home to his parents every day instead of leaving. Which was obviously possible. Evidence: everything around him. But that wasn’t Ronan’s problem. It couldn’t be.

Ronan finished up and turned to get the puppy. He’d have to break into the barns. There was nowhere else to keep a dog. He tried to pretend that this was not part of the motivation for saving the creature. He partially succeeded.

He paused, though. Ronan did not often pause. But when he did, it always felt like there was something hanging in the balance, something that was waiting to turn. To fall to this side, or to that.

The sight of the puppy on the chair and the memory of Adam’s eyes when he’d sat on the same chair earlier stirred something in Ronan. A kind of knowing that couldn’t be unknown. Ronan paused, and let it come. When it did, he felt for the first time that he was a trespasser in Adam’s space.

Ronan had pulled one of Adam’s secrets from within the fertile creativity of his mind, and now he carried it with him in the knowing world. He hadn’t intended to, but he had. Adam’s secret was the secret of being small. The secret of why he never left. The secret of why a person so capable of everything hadn’t been capable of the most basic self-preservation. He had been small, and he had never been rescued, and this truth was folded and hidden inside himself, carefully kept from view.

In other people, the sense of having trespassed would have made them leave all the more quickly. In Ronan, the newly raised stakes just made him more willing to double down. He’d come this far. He’d take it one step farther. So, instead of leaving, he gathered the puppy and went to Adam’s room to settle down for the night. He was staying. Let’s see what the fuck would happen next.

What happened next was not that exciting, as it turned out. What happened next was that Ronan fell asleep.

When Adam came back from work, he discovered that in addition to doors that locked and actual furniture and cabinets with cans and boxes and jars of food, there were two sleepers waiting for him. Ronan had been as good as his word, and cleaned up the giant mess they’d made on behalf of the puppy in the multipurpose living/dining/kitchen/office room. But in a sense Ronan had lied; he had not removed all traces of adorableness. Instead, he’d fallen asleep, on the floor beside Adam’s bed.

This was not an uncommon occurrence. For reasons Adam didn’t care to question too closely, Ronan seemed to do most of his sleeping here. Since Adam’s new place was perfect but tiny, that sleeping had to occur on the floor. Ronan didn’t seem to mind, so Adam decided that he wouldn’t, either.

Adam smiled now, at the sight of Ronan curled on the floor around the puppy. Ronan had taken a pillow from the chair in the multipurpose room, a breach he’d never dared on his own behalf. But now the puppy was sleeping snugly on the soft surface of the cushion, while Ronan was lying half-curled around her on the hard wood of the floor.

Something about being around a puppy gave him the freedom to feel soft in a way he didn’t usually allow himself. Adam found a blanket and laid it over them, careful not to cover the puppy and risk suffocating it in its own sleepy breath.

Adam felt pleasantly uneasy as he quickly went through the motions of getting ready for bed. He had not known before this moment that such a feeling was possible. Adam lay down in bed, and tried to pull the feeling apart. Without quite intending to, he turned to his side, letting his arm extend beyond the edge of the mattress, bringing his hand in contact with the soft vibrant warmth of the puppy’s fur. He felt the small movement of Ronan’s breath close across his fingers, rhythmically out of phase with the quicker rise and fall of the puppy’s chest.

The feeling was stronger now, and shifted. In the liminal space of a mind falling asleep, Adam let go of the need to give it a name. It filled him, a feeling that bordered on painful, but wasn’t. Adam’s mind was no less active during this drifting bridge from wakefulness to sleep, but its activity was different. A question that had plagued him for a long time now floated to the surface.

Why him? Ronan, looking, choosing. Ronan looked at him, but why? He knew why, but why? Why would it be him? There was nothing Adam could think of that made it make sense. This was irritating.

Adam’s mind held two contradictory beliefs with respect to love. He fully believed both, despite their mutual exclusion. Human minds have the remarkable ability to perform this twisting feat when it comes to topics too big or too slippery to bear seeing all at once. This doubling is universal; but we don’t like knowing it, and so usually, we don’t. Adam’s waking brain was only willing to consider one of the opposites at a time. His dwindling wakefulness, however, gave him the strength to tolerate the ambiguity, and he held both truths at once.

It was this: Love was a fiction people invented to explain to themselves why they invested so much in the other humans who just happened, by contingent fate, to co-exist in the same region of time and space.

And it was this: Love was a powerful force bestowed onto the worthy, defining a boundary of grace around them. One that had always excluded Adam.

And now there was a third: Love was a thing Adam himself felt. Towards a contingent as hell asshole he couldn’t be around for five minutes without fighting. And random as fate might be, however un-predestined the crossing of his path with Ronan’s, he loved Ronan, very specifically. He loved the soft lines of his face in sleep. He loved the sharp edges of that same face in the day, alert. Adam loved the fact that Ronan acted on his beliefs and didn’t tolerate bullshit. Adam loved something ineffable, something that was the essential core of what it meant to be Ronan; an inner fire that made everything around him somehow bigger, more saturated with color, more alive.

This new, unexpected truth was traveling now. It began to coalesce in the warm cocoon of Ronan’s breath and the puppy’s fur that enclosed Adam’s fingers and hand. It followed the solid straight line of his arm, up to his heart, where it made some room for itself and settled with strength and comfort. He, Adam, felt these feelings. Not as thoughts, but as feelings. And not abstract, but focused. On Ronan. Adam’s heart discovered that there could be contingence and grace, both.

Blanketed with these contradictory, pleasurably uneasy, not quite painful revelations, the three sleepers slept soundly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if anyone is displeased that Opal is a dog. There was just no way in hell I was having Ronan adopt a human in this particular au, and puppy seems like a better device for bringing Adam and Ronan closer together and capable of Feelings than a goat or whatever.
> 
> oh yeah, and also, this is one of those chapters that refers to earlier chapters, which is a little unfair of me given how much time goes by between updates, but I can find no other way to be myself than who I am, and that is a person with unpredictable inter-chapter delays. The main reference that matters is Adam's secret of having once been small, and that is from chapter 11, Proceeding from the heat oppressed brain.


	11. Nature seems dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nature and nurture. Either way, Adam drew the short end of that stick. It's time to kill nature. Or at least make it dead to Adam.

Because they were both idiots, neither Ronan nor Adam said anything the next morning.

Or the next, or the next, or the next.

Because they were both idiots who had suffered a lot of shit that made life confusing beyond reason, this was probably for the best.

Adam might think fast, and Ronan might drive fast; but when it came to accepting the possibility of happiness, they were both painfully slow.

Though they would have scoffed if it had been suggested, they needed this time. To get used to the steadily growing flame of warmth. To become acclimated to the tentative, flowering joy.

They had their own reasons. Adam was, by now, very certain of his own feelings.

Adam liked feeling certain about things.

He was reasonably certain of Ronan’s feelings too. He even believed in the possibility of them. This quality of belief was a step beyond knowing that Adam had been unaware of until now. The belief had filtered in during the night, born of a sleepy amalgam of logic and feeling.

The logic was this: if he, Adam, could love him, Ronan, for no clear rational reason, then the reverse could be true. A process that had started months ago, hiding in the entryway of Gansey’s loft at Monmouth, had finally crystallized. The feeling was this: for the first time in his life, Adam knew and believed that he was wanted. That he was loved.

Which, though admittedly nice, turned out to be fucking terrifying. At a minimum, it required a complete realignment of everything Adam knew himself to be. In reality, it required a complete realignment of everything Adam knew the world to be.

So, although Adam was sufficiently sure of the state of external affairs with regards to himself and Ronan, he remained unsure of what the fuck he wanted to do about it. It had been terrifying to be the object of genuine want; it was ten times worse, now that he reciprocated. Adam wasn’t sure what the cost of giving in to it would be.

Adam feared that the cost would be his fledgling freedom. He feared that starting an actual relationship would be like signing a contract. He would be obligated, and it would just be a new kind of trap.

Adam was still several years from being able to understand that he was the one creating the trap. He was needlessly trapping himself with this simulacrum of reason. He was letting the fear of not getting what he might want, stop him from actually getting what he did want. What he desperately, passionately wanted, more than he was willing to know.

That was Adam’s hesitation.

Ronan was hesitant because of Adam’s obvious hesitation. Ronan was willing to be a reckless asshole in most areas of his life, but in the one situation where it might do him some good, he couldn’t pull it off. So he didn’t say anything, and Adam didn’t say anything.

The orphan puppy was the most talkative out of the three of them, and she didn’t speak at all.

The entire situation was like the board book bear hunt. They couldn’t go over it. They couldn’t go under it. They just had to go through it.

We, however, have the advantage of narrative. Adam and Ronan couldn’t skip over any of the excruciating endless moments they would need to make the transition from fear and revelation, to safety and enactment.

But we can. And so, we will. Some of them, least.

Even we will need to be patient.

//////

Adam was alone.

He was sitting at the small wooden table at the front of the courtroom. His tie was straight. A stack of paperwork waited neatly before him.

Usually, being alone felt good. Or it felt like nothing.

It never felt like this, so cold.

Briefly, Adam let himself wish that for once, he’d asked for help. That he’d asked Gansey or Ronan to come with him today. Or even told them that this was happening, at all.

The wish was as hard to shake as it was stupid. He knew that if he had it to do over again, he’d do everything the same way. There was no world in which he was going to let Ronan and Gansey see him at the mercy of this anonymous court, or watch him beg for a freedom he may not be granted.

(Adam didn’t think the word “vulnerable,” although it was the right word for what he couldn’t stand having exposed to his friends. Even _thinking_ the word “vulnerable” rendered him too vulnerable. It was such a powerful word; and Adam felt so powerless.)

No. He wasn’t going to ask them to endure this stuffy courtroom and depressing parade of awful people, just so, so, so what even? So he would feel less _alone_? For _moral_ support? The words sounded mocking in his own mind, and unconsciously he shook his head, just a little, trying to shake the feeling off.

The thought wouldn’t let go. He may not like it, but he still wished it. Adam wished they were here, with him. He wished that he had Gansey’s assurance and Ronan’s defiance here in court with him, anchoring him to his other self.

Alone, he was untethered. Why was he even here? What was this about for him, anyway?

Adam knew the technical answer; it was his emancipation hearing. But, sitting alone, the point of it all eluded him.

He tried to remember. He was doing this so that his paycheck was his own, so that his apartment was his own, so that he could choose his own school and make his own decisions.

But was that even what it was about, anymore? His arrangement with Persephone was pretty well crafted to preclude any chance of his parents forcing themselves on him again. They didn’t know where he worked, didn’t know where he lived. He was halfway through his last year of school. And by now, by the time this hearing was finally happening, it was only a few months before he became legally an adult without any extra paperwork.

It wasn’t practical.

And Adam liked to think that he was, more or less, a completely practical person.

So Adam felt alone, and adrift. Like he was dressed up in someone else’s clothes. Like he was pretending to be someone he wasn’t.

Or maybe, the problem was that here, in this court, Adam was reduced to being exactly who he was. An anonymous kid in an airless courtroom. First waiting hours for his turn on the long hard benches in the back along with all the other pathetic people for whom this was the world. Then shifting from the hard wood of the holding-place purgatory benches at the back, to the hard wood of this chair at the front of the room. Sitting here, his hearing about to begin, didn’t change anything.

Except for the worse. Because now his parents were at the other table, close enough for him to smell them. His mother smelled the same, and the familiar scent pushed Adams shoulders down another inch. His father smelled different. No alcohol, no sweat. He looked different too. Calm, strong, in control.

Adams stomach turned. What was he even doing? Why did he think anything good could come from defying his parents? How could he still not have learned his lesson?

The judge was entering the courtroom, and everyone was standing. Adam experienced a moment of panic that his legs wouldn’t hold him. For a blinding second, he thought that he was back on those steps. That he would stumble again and fall again and that this time, the silence at the end of the fall would be complete.

The half-complete silence was enough to mean that Adam didn’t hear the door open to his left. Adam sensed the people around him shifting, though; turning to look at something. Still standing, fingers surreptitiously gripping the edge of the table to steady him, Adam turned too.

He was surprised at how not surprised he was to see Ronan and Gansey, walking confidently through the doors and across the courtroom, up to the table to sit beside him. A rush of warmth shocked its way through him, and his fingers relinquished their white-knuckled claim to the table’s edge.

As Gansey chatted with the judge (because of course) and Ronan stared menacingly at the Parrishes (because of course), Adam overcame the sounds and smells around him enough to finally remember the rest of himself.

He returned to the Adam-self that had these two strange and wonderful boys for friends. The self at the top of his class. The self with a job and an apartment and a tiny but steadily growing savings account and a spreadsheet with the stats and details of all the colleges he was considering.

With the rush of self, came the sudden memory of what he was doing here. Here, in this courtroom, he was petitioning for his right to belong completely and only to himself.

Because that’s what it had always been about, really. Everything his parents did (and didn’t do) had been about owning him. Every bruise and insult and punishment was background music for a song whose chorus was “you belong to us.”

And it was fucking worth a day in court to have someone finally say, Not anymore. You never did. You are your own, and no one else’s.

Adam was his own, but he wasn’t alone, anymore. His shoulders settled themselves back into a straight line as he stood up, bracketed by Gansey on one side and Ronan on the other, to continue the long (but, as he was finally discovering, not endless) process of freeing himself.

Ronan sat himself very deliberately between Adam and the small bit of space that separated him from his father. Robert’s eyes turned vicious when he saw Ronan, and more vicious still when Ronan smiled at him and gave him a lazy wave. There was more menace in that offhand gesture than most people could pack into a switchblade. Sometimes, being made up of nothing but sharp edges worked in Ronan’s favor. Or in the favor of those he favored.

Finally, the hearing began. Adam stood, and spoke clearly and firmly as he laid out his request to be considered a full adult in the eyes of the law. His fingers remained still and his voice was steady, but inside he was trembling.

Then, it was his parents’ turn to speak. Adam had no idea what to expect them to say. He’d honestly assumed they would skip the hearing. That they’d be happy to have him off their hands and no longer their legal weight to bear. Isn’t that what they’d told him, over and over and over again, for as long as he could remember? What a burden he was, what trouble he was for them to keep and feed and clothe?

Ironically, their presence here in court, blocking his plea to be free of them, was a comforting thing. Not in a fucked up way, not anymore. But because it made it painfully apparent that it had never had anything to do with the litany of faults they recited for him daily. This was about them, not him; it always had been. About them owning and hating and blocking him, even when it cost them more than letting him go would.

The clarity helped, but only up to a point. Only up to the point at which his father stood, and spoke.

Robert Parrish had dressed for the occasion, and was sober for once. Adam gritted his teeth against the knowledge that his paychecks were what had bought Robert Parrish’s suit. While he stood in a frayed secondhand Aglionby school jacket and tie.

Adam didn’t see what Gansey saw. What the judge saw, and the bailiff, and the stenographer and all the random people waiting their own turn on the gallery benches.

They all looked at Adam and saw a young, handsome man, with a determined posture and clear intelligent eyes, dressed sharply in the armor of an institution well known for its excellence and rigor.

They looked at Robert, a few feet away, and they saw an angry man, shifting uncomfortably in clothing he didn’t know how to wear, every fidgeting glare and huff betraying the ugly fury that lurked below the suit-thin surface.

Adam still saw what he’d always seen; in the mirror of his parent’s house, reflected in his parents’ eyes. That’s also what this was about. It was about letting other people see him, and see his parents. It was about learning to see himself the way his friends did, not the way his parents did.

Robert Parrish had begun speaking. “Your honor, I wouldn’t be here to bother you, but what the boy is doing is just plain wrong, and it has to be said.”

He spoke more fluently than Gansey had been expecting. Gansey could hear Blue in his head, berating him for being tricked by stereotypes. Yes, Adam’s father was a drunk, ignorant, abusive piece of shit. This did not mean he was stupid. It didn’t mean he wasn’t still dangerous, even here, where he was unable to resort to the blunt harm that had previously sufficed to keep Adam hurt.

“We’ve always done right by the boy, given him everything. He wanted to go to that private school of his. Too good for public schools, nothing ever good enough for him. They were good enough for me and his mother, but not for him, he said. And so we sent him there. I’m a hardworking man and that schooling doesn’t come cheap, but we did what needed doing so the boy could go.”

Adam’s anger rose, sour and hot, like bile. The shame that always came with his anger weighed it down, until the combination choked him.

The elder Parrish was working up to the heart of his argument. “We sent him to that school, and this how he repays us. We’re hard working people. It’s a disgrace, what he’s trying to do, and it’s hurting his mother. She’s hurting from all this that he’s doing to us. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here. We’ve always done right by him,” Robert Parrish repeated in closing, pleased with the formulation and how he felt saying it out loud, here, to a judge. “We just want that made clear.”

Ronan’s snort was audible. Adam’s father looked at him and glared. And then decided to add,

“And that school that cost us all that money, that school’s filled with hooligans and thugs worse than anything the public schools turn out. This boy here attacked me in my own home. Sent me to the hospital. I couldn’t work for a week, on top of those medical bills I couldn’t pay. Now my own boy’s trying to get out of helping his own parents, and it’s not right. That’s all, your honor.”

When Robert Parrish sat down, he seemed to occupy twice as much space as Adam did. Adam remained where he was, having researched enough of courtroom protocol to know to wait for the judge.

Judge Harris sat at the bench, unaffected and superior, and looked through some papers while he made the rest of them wait. Then he leaned forward, papers in hand, and addressed Adam’s father.

“You will remain standing until I have determined that your testimony is complete.”

Robert Parrish stood up, managing not to look flustered. The judge continued. “Is it your assertion then, Mr. Parrish, that Mr. Lynch attacked you, unprovoked, on your own property?”

“Yes sir, your honor. That’s how it happened.”

“Can you please explain to the court how Adam Parrish came to be injured that evening?”

“I can’t rightly say, your honor. I suppose he fell, when he and his friend were coming to attack me.”

“I see.” More papers rustling. “You would like the court to believe that your son, Adam Parrish, and his classmate, Ronan Lynch, drove to your residence in the late evening of September 22nd. That, upon arriving, they attacked you for no reason at all. And that, in the process, your son, Adam, gave himself a concussion and knocked his own head into the ground hard enough to permanently damage hearing in his left ear?”

Robert Parrish looked uneasy for the first time. It was possible he had never learned of Adam’s deafness. His face betrayed nothing as he nodded. “Yes sir, that’s correct.”

Judge Harris moved his attention to Adam's mother. "Mrs. Parrish, the police records indicate that you were the one who placed the call to 911. Can you please tell the court what happened that evening?"

Adam's mother spoke, still sitting. The judge let it go. "It happened just like Robert said." 

Adam had known what she would say. Still, the words cut through him. Anger and shame battled for the right to own him. He breathed through it.

The judge waited to see if she had anything to add, and then turned to Adam.

“Mr. Parrish. Is that what happened?”

Adam stood, having researched enough of courtroom protocol to know to stand when he addressed the judge. “No, your honor, it is not.”

Adam tried to prepare himself for the inevitable next questions. What had really happened, then? Had it happened before? How often? When? For how long?

Adam remembered again why he had wanted to keep Gansey and Ronan away. Why he’d needed to be here alone.

But those questions never came. The judge let Adam’s statement stand as the final word on the matter, without need of further clarification.

“Mr. Parrish,” the judge turned to Adam’s father. “You may be seated.” Adam’s father sat.

“Mr. Parrish,” the judged turned to Adam, “You may remain standing. I have further questions for you.”

The judged looked through another small stack of papers. “I see here that you have been employed at a garage for thirty-five hours a week during the school year, and sixty during school breaks?”

Adam did not look at either of his friends. He’d never specified the actual number of hours he worked. “Yes, your honor, though I am no longer employed there.”

The judge nodded, and went on.

“I have here a letter from Headmaster Childs, along with your transcripts. Can you please explain to the court how you have maintained your academic standing at the top of your year, given your full course load and nearly full time work schedule?”

The question took Adam by surprise. He couldn’t understand what the judge was really asking, or why. Did he think Adam was lying about work? Did he think Adam was cheating at school?

Adam knew that the petition for emancipation relied on his demonstrating an ability to function as an independent adult. He had planned for questions about income and attendance. He had planned to defend his assertion that he could no longer live at home with his parents.

He had planned for many things, in fact, but not for this. It felt like a trick question. Adam decided to answer as honestly and succinctly as possible.

“I’m smart, and I work hard, your honor. I don’t know how else to answer the question.”

Adam’s good ear was toward his parents, so he heard the scrape of his father’s chair against the ancient courtroom floor. Adam couldn’t repress the instinctive flinch that the sound elicited. His ears burned. He remained standing.

The sound had not escaped the judge, either. He turned sharply to Robert Parrish and said firmly,

“I will remind you, Mr. Parrish, that in my court you will remain seated and silent until I determine that it is your turn to speak; and, that when you do speak, you will address me, and only me, directly and respectfully.”

Gansey frowned. This seemed like a strangely long and specific statement, until the judge went on to add,

“If you violate any of the rules of this court you will be held in contempt. Do not try me, Mr. Parrish.”

Now, Gansey smiled. The long list of potential violations allowed for many potential counts of contempt. Gansey was pretty sure that Judge Harris was purposefully baiting Adam’s father, and he was delighted by it.

The judge turned back to Adam, ignoring the look of resentful fury that had broken through Robert Parrish’s pantomime of gentility. He continued where he had left off, as if there had been no interruption.

“That answer will do. My next question concerns whether you will be able to continue at school, if the petition is granted and you lose the support of your parents.”

Robert Parrish looked partially mollified. But the judge went on,

“I am able to answer that question myself. I subpoenaed the tuition invoices from Aglionby, as well as your bank statements. These documents show that all tuition payments came directly from your account. Furthermore, the only deposits to that account came directly from your employer. I can only conclude that your parents did not, in fact, contribute in any material way to your schooling. Therefore, leaving them will not adversely impact your ability to continue at Aglionby.”

Adam blinked. His normally ordered mind was having trouble keeping track of the case, and the judge, and his father, all at once. He couldn’t tell how things were going. He risked looking at his friends. Gansey was smiling in a way that managed to express intellectual and personal satisfaction, with a touch of schadenfreude.

That calmed Adam.

Ronan was sitting almost exactly as he had been all along. But Adam was attuned enough to Ronan’s face by now to recognize that his expression has changed. And he was familiar enough with Ronan by now to easily identify the new expression as one of vicious satisfaction. That warmed Adam.

Adam’s feelings about the two of them being here whiplashed back to relief and gratitude. He tried to clear his mind of anything else, as the judge continued speaking.

“One concern the court would usually have when evaluating a petition for emancipation, is how the individual would plan to feed and house himself without his parent’s assistance. Without such assurance, the court would be remiss to allow the petition. Your income is only barely enough to cover your tuition. Leaving the question of how you could possibly pay for rent and food.”

Adam’s blood froze. But this was another rhetorical question. The judge seemed to be enjoying himself.

“But I note that you have secured housing as part of your current employment. In addition, the presence of your friends here today demonstrates that you have secured a reliable safety net for yourself, even if their delayed entrance leads one to believe you are more reluctant than you should be to make use of it. Regardless, there can be no remaining doubt about your ability to provide for yourself without parental assistance. I suspect you have been doing so since long before leaving their residence.”

Adam felt naked, exposed, transparent. It was not a comfortable feeling. But nor was it as terrible a feeling as he would have expected, as the knowing was so clearly accompanied by respect. Adam didn’t know what to make of any of it, and it wasn’t over.

“The final concern the court might have with regard to education is whether the petitioner would continue to attend school without the regulating force of a parent or guardian. Your school records show that your school attendance has only improved since moving out of their residence. It appears your parents were, if anything, an impediment to your presence at school. At this point, the court is satisfied that you can provide for yourself and will not become truant. The only remaining consideration is grounds for leaving.”

Adam found it hard to breathe.

“The accumulated evidence we have seen so far, including your attendance records and your excessive extracurricular employment, suggest that you have more than adequate grounds. However, the police report from the night of September 22nd does raise questions.”

Gansey was frowning. Ronan looked murderous. Adam looked drained, and was trembling slightly. Judge Harris had never explicitly rejected Robert Parrish’s account of that night. And he hadn’t given Adam the opportunity to counter it, beyond simple denial.

For his part, Gansey was certain that Judge Harris understood the truth of that night, and all the ones that had preceded it, perfectly clearly. Gansey was frowning not because he was unsure of the outcome of this hearing. He was upset because Judge Harris’ penchant for theatrics, so amusing a few minutes ago, now verged on cruelty.

Fortunately, the moment passed quickly. Judge Harris finally addressed Adam in a way that left no doubt about his belief in Adam’s testimony. And, demonstrating a surprising amount of insight into Adam’s trigger points (or, perhaps not so surprising, considering that he was a family court judge), he spoke in a tone of detached legal gravity that contained only justice, not pity.

“It appears that you initially pressed criminal charges against your father, and then dropped them shortly thereafter. If the concern that made you drop the charges was whether the evidence would be sufficient to find your father guilty, then allow me reassure you with that it would. If the concern was one of your safety, there are measures the court can take to make sure your father cannot get to you. In light of these considerations, are you certain, Mr. Parrish, that you do not wish to pursue the criminal charges?

Adam tried to parse all the clues in the judge’s words. Was he saying that Adam’s emancipation was dependent on his willingness to pursue criminal charges? Was that even legal?

His confusion was interrupted by the judge, who had turned to address to his father sharply. This time, Adam hadn’t noticed Robert move.

When Adam looked at his father, a rush of fear and adrenaline made him momentarily lightheaded and numb. Robert looked like he had looked countless times before. Adam could read the warnings in the set of his father’s shoulders, the spitting fury on his face, the way his whole body was coiled and tense, his shirtsleeves pushed up to reveal his massive forearms, knuckles cracking in the dead traps of his hands.

Adam knew he could see the violence that those gestures promised; he hadn’t realized until now that other people could see it, too.

The certainty of power in Judge Harris’ quietly firm voice was more effective than any posturing roar could have been. He spoke with finality.

“Mr. Parrish, you will be advised that I consider threatening body language as equivalent to verbal threats. I have already made my position clear on the matter of your silence. As I had not thought to specify in my earlier warning that gestures count as speech, I will allow you one more chance. Be aware that it is the final one. You will remain fully seated, and silent; you will face the front of this courtroom, and you will not so much as blink in the wrong direction if you do not want to be held in contempt.”

This short exchange was enough to convince Adam of two things. One, he never wanted to have to be in the same room as his father ever again, even if it was a courtroom. Two, this judge was not going to reject his petition.

So Adam replied, polite but forceful, “No, your honor. I don’t want to press criminal charges. I just want to be free of any legal obligation that might require me to come in contact with my parents ever again.”

Adam studiously avoided looking at his parents when he spoke. He kept his eyes on the judge, who returned his gaze, and nodded.

“That is a shame, but reasonable. Would you agree to a restraining order?”

“Yes, your honor. And. Um. Thank you?” Adam’s voice was uncharacteristically uncertain. The whole experience was starting to be overwhelming.

Robert Parrish finally broke. Maybe it was this subtle expression of weakness on Adam’s part that finally released the last bit of control his father had over himself. Maybe it was just a matter of time. Robert Parrish was not a man accustomed to self-restraint.

And, Robert thought to himself, as he started to stand up, forcefully shaking off his wife’s restraining hand on his arm, he was definitely not going to be fucking pushed around by some fucking liberal asshole who called himself a judge, not in front of his own son, who by rights should be obeying his father, not standing there, satisfied as fuck and surrounded by his soft rich fucking friends…

Robert Parrish wasn’t fully aware of which words had come spitting out of his mouth, or how far he had moved towards Adam. But he had fucking taken that smug look off the lying face of his goddamn ungrateful kid, and by god he was going to-

But then he was aware of his arms being pulled behind his back, as the bailiff tried to restrain him. Judge Harris’s voice penetrated the thundering fury of his mind. “… eight counts of contempt. Nine. Ten. Enough. Officer Yower, please assist in retraining Mr. Parrish. You will please keep him restrained until this court is adjourned for the morning, and then take him into custody. We will determine his sentencing after the midday recess.”

With Yower’s help, the bailiff succeeded in cuffing Robert Parrish. He strained for a minute, red faced, and finally stopped moving and speaking. Nothing could make him stop glaring. Adam’s mother was crying quietly at the table.

More than any of Robert’s posturing, it was the sound of Adam’s mother crying for the wrong fucking person that set Ronan’s teeth grinding, that shaped his hands into fists. Ronan didn’t know which was more dangerous: his desire to rip Robert’s throat out, or his impulse to surround Adam, to hold him and shield him from the awful sound of his mother’s abandonment. Either way, Ronan was burning up from the inside. He was not going to be able to fucking sit here for much longer.

He didn’t have to. When things had settled back down, Judge Harris quickly issued his ruling.

“The court grants Adam Parrish’s petition emancipation. Ms. Wilson, please see to it that a restraining order is attached to the ruling.”

The fog that had settled around Adam started to lift.

It was done.

He was free.

An external authority had looked into the ugly heart of Adam Parrish’s life, and found him innocent. Found his father guilty.

But Adam was wrong, at least in part. It was not done, yet. The judge was not finished speaking. Adam tried to remain present enough to continue listening, but his consciousness longed for a break.

“This finding is retroactive to September 22. Any wages that were transferred to Robert Parrish since that date are ordered to be returned to Adam Parrish with interest calculated at prime plus two percent. That concludes the legal ruling on this case. But, if I may, I have two additional recommendations.”

Judge Harris paused. A beat of silence passed before Adam realized that the judge was waiting for him to reply.

“Um, yeah. Of course. Your honor,” he added clumsily.

The judge smiled. “My first recommendation is that you meet with me to discuss your options with respect to college. I’m sure you’ll have your pick of universities, but I’d like the opportunity to shamelessly recruit you to my Alma Mater.”

Gansey’s smile was nearly audible.

“Yes, sir. I’d be honored,” Adam replied helplessly.

“Good. Thank you, Mr. Parrish. My secretary will be in touch with you to arrange it. My second recommendation is that you apply to the summer internship we run in conjunction with a range of nonprofits and law firms across the city. I will have my secretary forward you the application forms and promotional materials, and you can read them at your leisure to determine whether the internship might be of interest to you.”

Adam nodded dumbly, too worn out with elation and confusion to speak. The room was blessedly quiet. His mother had vacated the courtroom as soon as her husband had been escorted out to the holding area.

“Very well then, Mr. Parrish. That will be all.” Judge Harris stood, and the other boys followed suit.

Before he exited to his chambers, the judge paused one last time, nodding to Gansey.

“Mr. Gansey, it’s always a pleasure to see you. Your father will be happy to hear of the wisdom you’ve exhibited in your choice of associates. Though I dare say he already knows. And Mr. Lynch, if I may be so bold, I expect that yours would have felt the same.”

And with that, Judge Harris swept from the courtroom, satisfied by the stunned silence he left in his wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Acknowledged deviations from canon: in my au, Adam is petitioning for emancipation, not pressing criminal charges. I explain why in chapter 12, "I see thee yet." And in my courtroom, Adam is wearing his Aglionby uniform, not a suit. Because he doesn’t fucking need a suit. He is the magician, this is his cloak, and he’s worked harder for that Aglionby jacket than anyone there had ever worked for a suit.


	12. And wicked dreams abuse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the hearing, Ronan brings Adam to the source of his dreaming. To the Barns. Home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most of the deer were ordinary Virginia whitetails, fed and tamed by Ronan for no purpose other than delight.  
> \-- The Raven King

Fucking Gansey was going back to class now that the hearing was over, because of fucking course he was. But there was no way in hell Ronan was going. And, he very sincerely hoped, there was no way Adam was either, for once.

There wasn’t.

Ronan’s grin was a glittering thing when Adam got into his car without even thinking to ask. They’d exchanged fist bumps with Gansey and waved off his Camaro, then turned as one to the grey promise of Ronan’s BMW. Ronan drove fast; one eye on the road, the other on Adam.

Ronan never wanted to stop seeing that look on Adams face. Fierce and triumphant. Awake, totally awake. Which was ironic, since Ronan was quite sure that his own sleep would be dominated by the dreams of Adam’s eyes, open and hard and alive and alight in the courtroom.

Ronan’s dreams of Adam usually entailed eyes closed and fingers engaged in something other than handing documents back and forth to the bailiff, but he was pretty sure his unconscious mind would find a way to work Adam’s look of raw power into the mix.

Ronan had expected to feel angrier. He wanted Robert Parrish locked up for the rest of his fucking life. He wanted Adam to beat the shit out of his father and then drag the man’s sorry ass to jail. He wanted justice to reign and punishment to rain down and obliterate the insidious darkness of Robert Parrish.

But Ronan found himself perfectly at peace. His seething anger was cooled by Adam’s obvious satisfaction and relief. For Adam, it had been enough and more than enough when the judge agreed that yes, he had every fucking right to cut those shitty assholes right the fuck out of his life. (The judge might have phrased it a bit differently, but the sentiment came through loud and clear.)

Ronan still preferred violent resolutions, but he was willing to accept that this was probably better for Adam.

The day still felt raw; electric; alive. _Ronan_ felt raw, and electric, and alive. He would incinerate to ash if he couldn’t do _something_. Something bigger than school, that was for fucking sure. Something bigger than Monmouth. Something big enough to hold all the possibility sparking in the air around him.

He missed the next exit on the highway. And then the next. When he’d passed the third one, Adam finally turned away from the window to look at him.

“The fuck, Lynch?” he asked. But there was a smile in Adam’s voice, and that was all the encouragement Ronan needed. He aimed the shark nose of his BMW toward home, and let his foot push all his nervous energy through the gas pedal and into the roaring air around them.

Adam had known, when he got into the car with Ronan instead of with Gansey, that he wasn’t going to class that afternoon. That was ok. He’d already arranged not to go to work that night. Or rather, he’d planned to arrange it. Persephone had beaten him to it. She’d called last week to let him know that she would be running some sort of three-day book-club/meditation-retreat/baking-class this week, and therefore didn’t need him to come in.

There was no way she could have know about his court date. Probably. But the timing was strange, and Adam suspected that she knew something, somehow. Adam had given up on trying to understand how Persephone knew things. She’d told him the last time he asked, that he was an easy book to read. Adam hadn’t taken it too badly. He’d seen the incomprehensibly dense books she tended to read.

So Adam was free to give himself this time. To let himself look across the gearshift at Ronan’s face, bright and fierce and strange. While Ronan focused on going faster, faster, faster, Adam focused on the tendrils of ink he could see rising out above the neck of Ronan’s expensively faded t-shirt. (Ronan had ripped his tie off the second they’d left the courtroom; the jacket and button-down had disappeared the moment they reached the car. Adam was proud of his own Aglionby uniform, but he had no regrets about Ronan’s eagerness to shed his.)

Ronan still hadn’t answered Adam, but it didn’t matter. There was only one place they could be going.

Adam had never been to the Barns. He’d heard of it, of course. From Gansey, who’d visited an earlier incarnation of Ronan there, in the years when Niall was still alive and Ronan’s family still held court there. And from Ronan, who spoke bitterly about the tangled legalities that prevented them from staying after Niall had been killed.

Adam thought he’d be exhausted after the hearing. But he felt awake. He didn’t just feel awake; he felt finally awake. He felt present and conscious in a way he couldn’t remember being. It seemed right, in this state, that he should be going to the Barns with Ronan. It was a liminal moment, rich with possibility, and Adam wanted to lay claim to the new potential the world seemed suddenly to be offering up.

Adam had the oddly vertiginous sensation of something starting and shifting, irrevocably; he felt like the trajectory traced out by his life was switching from one track to a parallel one.

It’s possible that he was just nervous.

After an hour of (very fast) driving north along the Hudson river, Ronan took the exit to Singer Falls. Just past a tiny town nestled along the river, they turned onto a dirt road. The road seemed to go on forever. They passed neatly striped plots of land and small stone walls. They passed half a dozen red and white structures. Adam guessed that these must be the barns that made this The Barns.

The land between the buildings yawned and stretched, impossibly green. Despite the chill of late November weather, tomatoes still hung red on their vines and neat squares of varying shades of green promised carrots and rosemary and beets and basil and god only knew what else, laid out in impressive acres everywhere the eye could see. Beyond the tended plots of land loomed forests, vast and green. They drove past more trees than Adam had ever seen.

Adam knew in theory that New York State was a place of forests and farms, but he’d never been father north than the Bronx Zoo. Knowing and seeing were two very different things. He was filled with wonder.

It was a strange sensation. Adam was usually well fortified against this kind of sweeping, swelling, overwhelming feeling. But it was impossible to fend off something so thoroughly unanticipated. And there was no other word for this sensation that widened his eyes and expanded his understanding of what things lay waiting to be discovered in this world, closer than he’d ever imagined. Wonder.

The land around him and the boy beside him bled into each other in Adam’s experience of the moment, so that Ronan appeared as something transformed. Transcendent. Dreamer of dreams, spinner of whimsy, singer of really shitty songs. Adam’s heart beat a warm rhythm.

Ronan pulled the car behind one of the buildings, hidden from the road. He turned, planning to saying something snarky along the lines of _feel free to take off the seatbelt any time now, asshole, the car’s stopped_. But the words died on his lips when he saw Adam’s face. It felt like seeing it for the first time, and for the millionth.

Adam was different; Adam was the same.

There was a brightness in Adam’s gaze that hadn’t been there before; there was a twist to his lips that always had. Adam’s face was less gaunt, his skin no longer stretched and smudged with hunger and exhaustion. But Adam’s eyes were the same eerie pools of gold-green as they’d always been. And Adam’s hands were still perfect, long and elegant and calloused and strong.

Ronan looked and looked and couldn’t stop looking. Ronan looked at Adam, and was undone.

Here, in his car, at the threshold of his home, Ronan finally took the risk that had been eluding him for months. He leaned forward, resting one hand gently over Adam’s; more of a hover than a touch. And then he moved, quick and soft as a breath, and pressed his lips to Adam’s. More of a hover than a touch. Like the memory of a kiss, or the promise of one. And then he retreated, opened the door, pulled himself out of the car, and stormed off toward the main house.

Adam could see the shift in Ronan’s face a moment before his skin felt the whisper of Ronan’s hand, of his lips. The whole thing took only seconds, but Adam felt time slowing down, standing still. The moments between the decision in Ronan’s eyes and the press of his lips to Adam’s own were drawn out and lit up. Adam sensed the approach of something primal, inevitable, revelatory. It was the gray-green air before a storm and the electric knowledge that you were about to be drenched.

But Ronan, being ever the asshole, left Adam suspended in that never-ending instant. His fingers and lips retreated more quickly than they’d come, and Adam was left staring at Ronan’s retreating back before he finally registered that they were gone. Instead of the finality and closure of the rain pouring down, Adam felt the unresolved, contained frenzy of standing below a bank of storm clouds that had yet to break.

Ronan didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. Fuck. What the fuck was he even doing? Was Adam even following him? Why had he stormed out of the car? Why was he acting like such an asshole? Fuck. Adam was going to just stay in the car, wasn’t he? And what did Ronan even expect. And. _Why_. Why had he done that? Why had he kissed him? Ronan fucking knew the answer to that one, so the question was really, why had he kissed him like that? Half way? Ronan didn’t do halfway. His blood flickered and fizzed in his veins; his pulse beat loudly in the cavern of his body, his ragged breath filled his mind with white noise.

Ronan bypassed the house and slammed his way into the smallest barn, just beside the main building. More a shed than a barn. He grabbed a bag of feed and hauled a salt lick on a string over his shoulders. There were no animals on the farm, not anymore. There had never been many. It was a crop farm, not a meat or dairy one. But they still kept grain around, and Ronan had taken to feeding the deer that would gather at the border between the woods and the fields. He headed there, now, without looking to see if Adam had followed.

What the fuck was he even doing?

Feeding the deer calmed him. It always did. Ronan could slip into this version of himself, still and open and giving. The deer had always responded to his stillness. Declan used to tease him that he was like a princess in a Disney movie, communing with mice and shit. Aurora used to tell him he was like an ancient king in a fairy tale, able to speak the language of animals. Matthew used to just follow him, and laugh with joy when the deer appeared. And Niall. Well, Niall had never been around to see this side of him. And Ronan had never minded.

Adam was still in the car.

Adam was discovering a lot of things about himself today. He wasn’t exhausted; he was capable of wonder; and anger did not have the hold on him that he’d always feared. He realized, almost distantly, that he had every right to be furious with Ronan. He realized, much closer, that he wasn’t. At all. He felt more… sad. But for Ronan, not for himself. And amused. He felt like rolling his eyes and shaking his head. But most of all, he felt like tackling Ronan to the ground and finishing what he’d almost-not started in the car.

Adam knew Ronan well enough by now to understand that he needed to give him some space. He’d seen the twin beacons of Ronan’s ears lighting an embarrassed trail to the house, and past it. Ronan’s awkward retreat made Adam wonder if it had been Ronan’s first kiss. Adam had always assumed that a boy like Ronan – wealthy, arrogant, sharply handsome – had had ample practice. But Adam was starting to suspect he had been wrong about that. He was also starting to suspect that Ronan might think the same about him, and just as incorrectly.

Sure, Adam had gone through some of the motions of dating. It was part of the same disguise of normalcy that he’d worn to hide his secrets for years. But it had never gone farther than small smiles and occasional hand holding. For a lot of reasons.

There was no way anyone was seeing more of Adam’s skin than just his face and hands. And there was no way anyone was coming home with him. And he had no money, no car, no time, no energy. In truth, he’d had no desire, either. The effort of survival sapped every other feeling out of him. The biggest exception had been Blue, and she was adamantly not interested in kissing.

Maybe it was because he wasn’t solely focused on surviving anymore. Or maybe it was just because it was Ronan. Regardless, Adam might still have no money, no car, and no time. But now he was filled with an abundance of energy. As for desire, well. It felt like it was devouring him alive. One taste of Ronan, small as it was, had left him ravenous. 

Adam gave Ronan a minute. Two. Then he followed him, past yet another little building, and into a wide field. He was briefly startled out of his urgent pursuit, and fell completely still at the scene in front of him.

When he’d first turned far enough onto the field to catch sight of Ronan again, the other boy’s shoulders still screamed a warning and the other boy’s ears still shone red. But in the few moments it had taken Adam to get closer, Ronan had transformed. His posture was easy; now his cheeks were rosy but his ears were pale. He wasn’t quite smiling, but he wasn’t scowling, either.

Instead, Ronan was concentrating on a family of deer that had, impossibly, emerged from the woods. A buck, a fawn, a doe. Adam had the strange sensation of time and reality slipping across one another, like waves crossing in a pond. His heart was a bird, thrumming and beating its wings crazily against his ribs. _Fanciful,_ it hummed _. Purposeless. Lovely._

Ronan seemed otherworldly and ageless, framed in browns and blues and greens. The buck was busy licking the salt. He allowed Ronan’s fingers to rest gently on the soft velvet of his side. The fawn was nosing at Ronan’s hands, looking for food. The doe, ever vigilant beside her fawn, alone took note of Adam’s presence. She didn’t move, but her eyes locked on his, and her ears twitched almost imperceptibly.

Ronan, attuned to the deer, noticed. He turned. One eyebrow climbed (questioning, challenging) at the sight of Adam just standing and staring. Ronan somehow kept his voice light while speaking in a way that could still only be considered muttering, “Parrish. Stop staring. You’re being creepy.”

Adam smiled then, and the rest of the bright day seemed dimmer to Ronan. It was Ronan’s turn to wait, now; and he did. Ronan stood, knowing, unmoving, as his future moved towards him across the sun-dappled grass. In the shape of a boy he’d resented and wanted and loved for longer than he would ever admit.

Adam was pulling Ronan to him by the soft nape of his neck, even before he’d finished walking towards him. Ronan’s body obligingly shifted, and his mouth was ready when Adam’s claimed it.

This time, the touch was the opposite of hovering. It was searing, holding, engulfing.

It was also oddly wet. Adam couldn’t help but analyze the strange sensations as they registered in his still orderly mind. He found himself wondering why this bizarre act was the basis of so much imagination and energy, why it was the pivot around which every story and every movie and every whispered conversation turned.

But the strangeness passed quickly; it might never have been there at all. In its place surged a feeling so huge it couldn’t be held within him: affection and terror and joy and heat, until the heat bleached away everything else and all that was left was this.

And suddenly, this wasn’t enough. This small focus of contact, finger to neck, lip to lip, couldn’t possibly contain everything that was rising inside of him. He felt the sweep of Ronan’s tongue across his mouth with a relief bordering on desperation, and answered gratefully with his own.

Ronan’s hands came up gently, wonderingly, to frame Adam’s face; his fingers stretched back to slip across Adam’s jaw, behind his ears, into his hair. Everything about Adam was impossibly soft and unyieldingly strong, and reverence sung across Ronan’s fingers. He was singed, alight. Touched by the divine.

Ronan hesitated, then, unsure of whether he was alone under this spell, whether this blazing sense of worship and hunger was ok, was too much, was right. But the sound Adam made banished any doubt. Adam’s own hands moved slowly, shakily, until one was firmly against the center of Ronan’s back and the other crooked over his jaw and just behind his neck. Ronan reached up to take one of Adam’s hands in his own. He had dreamt this moment. They were both so alive inside it.

What neither of them had expected was the joy.

They kissed and kissed and kissed and then paused together, somehow synchronized, as though their bodies and minds had reached an agreement the boys didn’t yet know about. They smiled then, together, synchronous. The smile sharpened Adam and softened Ronan, until they were perfectly matched. 

They stayed, leaning toward one another, heads and fingers touching, breathing quickly. Adam was grateful for the pause. He felt ravenous but lightheaded, just this side of panicked. Fist bumps had been the maximum level of skin-to-skin contact he’d had for a long time, and this onslaught of touch was overwhelming.

Ronan was grateful, too. He felt transcendent and unstable. He was unused to being able to reach out and touch the people whose love he craved, and this sudden rush of closeness threatened to drown him.

The field was getting dark. It was cold. They had school the next day. (At least Adam did; Ronan still hadn’t decided.) Both boys were hungry. They always were. Starving, each in their own way. They were both a little less hungry now, but starving, still.

So they went to the main house. Ronan cooked them up a crazy mess of pasta and eggs and whatever else was lurking in the cupboards. They let themselves get full.

Adam laughingly admired the (truly excessive) doghouse Ronan had built for Opal (which is what Ronan begrudgingly agreed to call Orphan Girl). Ronan gruffly explained that the puppy still got upset whenever he left, so he was building her a little kingdom to occupy her when he couldn’t be there.

There were several other dogs on the farm, along with some remaining chickens and ducks. Ronan had arranged for the people who took care of the farm to take care of Opal, too. But he worried anyway. The other dogs were much bigger, and could roam much farther, and could walk away from fights and climb over rocks and sleep outdoors without getting cold.

Opal, true to her original namesake, refused to acknowledge any weakness, and insisted on doing whatever the rest of the pack was doing. Something painful and sweet tugged at Adam as he watched Ronan checking her paws for scrapes and brushing leaves and soil from her fur and letting her chase him around until she finally fell asleep, exhausted.

The drive back to Brooklyn was quiet. Well, actually, it was painfully loud, if you count actual sound. The afternoon may have changed some things, but Ronan’s taste in music and preference for volume was not among them. But it was quiet inside Adam. He felt still and whole. His fingers grazed Ronan’s over the gearshift. Ronan’s gaze lingered more obviously now. Adam’s smile lingered more naturally now. The night hovered in the air between them.

It was a little awkward when they pulled up in front the bakery. Adam nearly giggled from the nervous anxiety of it. Adam. Giggled. Only nearly, but still.

Ronan’s smile tried to be sharp, but failed. A laugh hid behind it, and a deep ocean of fondness hid behind the laugh. They postured, probably. It wouldn’t have fooled anyone, least of all themselves. But old habits die hard. And habits born of fear and pain die harder.

Which is probably why Ronan just dropped Adam off, and didn’t come in to sleep as he often would. They were used to having walls between them. The prospect of a night passing, side by side, with nothing to keep them apart; it was thrilling, but it was too much. Anything could happen. They had no idea how to contain it.

So they each slept in their own beds, apart.

Or they tried to, anyway. For the first time in his life, Adam couldn’t fall asleep. Insomnia was a bizarre sensation. He didn’t know how Ronan lived with it.

When Adam finally slept, his dreams were enormous. Mountains, avalanches; water, tidal waves; air, the vacuum of space. When his dreams turned to men, his father was waiting. Looming, enormous, freed from the constraints of the court and the judge. Exacting revenge for Adam’s defiance. His mother was there too, monstrously silent, watching.

Adam shuddered awake. He lay in bed, drenched in a cold sweat, trying to return to himself. He practiced the lessons learned from Persephone: he looked deep into the darkness, fell into himself. And found Ronan, waiting. The memories of the day were there to catch him. It was as if Ronan had found some magic to insert himself into Adam’s dreams. And Adam slept.

Ronan was awake. He was always awake, at night. Especially here, in his room in Monmouth, in a space that was his alone. Where there was no one to watch, and no narrative to distract him from the endless loop of his father’s body, dead in the driveway. His mother’s eyes, living but vacant.

Music poured through his headphones, loud and insistent and demanding; but it did nothing to drown out the dreadful silence of his lost parents.

Ronan lay in bed, clenched and rigid, trying to escape himself. He looked outside himself and found Adam. The memories of the day were there to catch him. He relived the hearing, remembering the cadence of the words the judge had used to free Adam and trap Robert.

Ronan fell asleep to the memory of Adam’s hands. Adam’s hands, passing papers back and forth in the courtroom. Adam’s hands, ghosting over his above the gearshift. Adam’s hands, firm against his back, his neck, his jaw. It was as though Adam had found some magic that freed Ronan to tolerate the present, as it inexorably replaced the past.

Separated by space, they woke. Connected by memory, they finally slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Fanciful, purposeless, but lovely" is one of my favorite lines from TRK. It describes the fireflies, not the deer, I know. But I feel like it captures the part of Ronan that only comes alive at the Barns, the final part of Ronan that Adam needs to see before he can let himself be in love.


	13. The curtain'd sleep;

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan and Adam go to the Barns for Thanksgiving.
> 
> The curtain closes; their sleep is sheltered.
> 
> And, a semicolon in the title!
> 
> My worst vice, punctuation-wise.
> 
> And such a beautiful stopping point for a fic; a pause but not an end. 
> 
> So, there is an epilogue; this is not the end.
> 
> And the plot already wrapped up in the last chapter; this is not the end.
> 
> (On that last point: the narrative arc ended in the last chapter, to the extent that there was any plot to begin with. But I hate slow burn fics that end with a kiss in the last paragraph and we never get to see more of it. So, please, have a gratuitous fluff chapter with a little requisite angst thrown in.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slowly his memories of before —everything this place had been to him when it had held the entire Lynch family —were being overlapped with memories and hopes of after —every minute that the Barns had been his, all of the time he’d spent here alone or with Adam, dreaming and scheming.
> 
> \--TRK

Ronan and Adam exchanged a silent grin. It was a very Ronan-and-Adam kind of grin, one of the few facial configurations that looked equally at home alongside Ronan’s usual expression of pre-emptive aggression and Adam’s usual expression of iron determination. It was a look that said, _may as well enjoy the benefit of having passed through every fucking ring of hell before being old enough to vote_.

Neither of them would have traded living, breathing, loving parents for the petty joy of not having to give a shit what those parents thought, but neither of them was going to waste this opportunity either. “This opportunity” being Thanksgiving break without a traditional family.

So they grinned and played video games while Gansey unhappily packed a suitcase full of uncomfortable shoes and boring silk ties. They threw things out of windows for the joy of watching them crash, while Noah negotiated sleeping arrangements for Henry over the phone. (“darling, of course we are delighted that you’re bringing a friend home for Thanksgiving; but, surely you realize that…”)

They waved gleefully at Blue’s retreating back as she stomped down the stairs, having been caught kissing Gansey goodbye for the break. (And why the two of them thought there was anything left to hide was its own mystery.)

And then, finally, they were alone. It was briefly awkward, until Ronan broke the tension with his usual assholery. “You still lose the family game, Parrish. At least I had invitations I turned down. You’re staying here to make pie.”

Adam rolled his eyes without heat. He had enough experience with Ronan by now that he didn’t feel the sting of what would have been cruelty, if it weren’t for the mutually known fact that the “invitations” Ronan had turned down were to Matthew and Declan’s respective girlfriends’ families.

The Lynches took the concept of family very seriously; it was abandoned only because of the bleakness of any alternatives. The fact that Ronan’s brothers had chosen to spend Thanksgiving with people who clearly didn’t count as _family_ was a painful testament to how unwilling they were to instead pass the hours in the depressing cheeriness of their mother’s hospital suite.

On top of which, Adam was pretty fucking excited about the pie. Which had been his idea to begin with.

Adam had been alarmed when Persephone told him that the bakery was closed for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was the undisputed holiday king of pie: pumpkin and sweet potato and corn and pecan and apple. Adam couldn’t believe that a pie bakery wouldn’t spend the whole day selling pie.

Persephone seemed to think that Adam’s concern was a spiritual one. The world must have pie, on this Holiday of Pie. Her response to him was earnest (though Adam suspected this meant she was amused). She never kept the bakery open on Thanksgiving, because she observed Pi Day instead. But, if Adam felt that Thanksgiving should be similarly honored, he was free to use the bakery. And she insisted that if he did, he should keep any money his pies brought in.

Since it was nearly impossible to find last minute fresh pumpkin pie in Brooklyn, Adam was confident he could make almost two month’s salary in a day. Not that he really needed to worry about money as much anymore. But still, it would be nice to be able to buy actual Christmas gifts for a change, now that he had actual friends to give them to.

The conversation about pie had also inspired a new working arrangement with Persephone. Adam was (not surprisingly) a genius when it came to the finances and mechanics of running a store. Persephone told him that she wanted him to run things however he liked; in lieu of a salary, he could keep any profit above what the bakery used to generate.

Which is how it came to be that Adam was no longer earning an hourly wage; he was now a full partner in the business. He felt a little bit guilty about it, because it was laughably easy to make the bakery more profitable than it used to be. Persephone might be deeply attuned to the language of spirits, but she was shit at accounting.

By the time Thanksgiving rolled around, Blue had almost convinced Adam that his guilt was wasted. No one had told Persephone to open a bakery and run it haphazardly while getting a PhD in music. No one even knew why the hell she had done it. All she’d said three years ago, when she had announced this new plan, was that she had a feeling that in three years she’d need it.

No one knew where the money to start it had come from either. But then again, no one really knew anything about Persephone. Her wispy cloud of hair and whispery secret of a voice were impenetrable barriers and unassailable defenses. Not even Maura or Calla knew her backstory. Though the three of them firmly held that backstories were just an un-seeable past, no more interesting than most people’s experience of the un-seeable future.

Ronan had made a big grumbling fuss about helping Adam make the pies (which is how Adam discovered that Ronan secretly loved to bake), in exchange for Adam helping him break into the Barns again on Thursday after the bakery closed. They both pretended they were doing one another a favor; they both were grateful for the pretense, and for the company.

At the bakery on Thanksgiving, Adam realized several things. One was that he’d never before tried to cook anything that hadn’t come out of a box, jar or can. The second was that Ronan was amazingly focused and demanding when working on something he actually gave a shit about. The third was that the two of them worked really well together.

The pies came out great.

The bakery was packed. They made closer to three months’ salary than two.

Ronan cooked while Adam handled the customers. They wouldn’t be getting to the Barns until after dark, and Ronan had high standards for Thanksgiving dinner. Adam’s stomach growled at the smells emerging from the kitchen in the back. Ronan pretended to need seasoning advice as an excuse to feed him. Then he decided, fuck lying. They didn’t need any excuse to eat. It’s not like there was a point in standing on ceremony. In fact, the whole point was that they didn’t fucking have to.

So they cooked and ate and baked and ate and sold pies and cleaned the kitchen and packed up the car. And then they drove to Singer Falls, full and happy and just a tiny bit terrified of the days (and nights) expanding out ahead of them. They would be alone at the Barns for the first time since the court date. It was a delicious, thrilling kind of terror. But, fear was still fear, and they found ways to avoid one another once they’d arrived.

First, they had to break into the house again. This was less fraught than it had been the last time. Judge Harris had reached out to Ronan to tell him that the investigations that had been ongoing since Niall’s death were mostly wrapped up. He added that, while the injunction would stand for at least another six months, there would be no one monitoring the property anymore.

Ronan suspected Gansey of interfering. (He was right.) And it was just fucking fine with him. Gansey could interfere all the fuck he wanted, as far as Ronan was concerned. Unlike some bullshit diploma, his home was something Ronan badly needed. Unlike Adam, Ronan wasn’t averse to a little help.

Regardless, breaking in provided their first distraction. They took less care about being seen, but more care about restoring the locks to a state better suited for overnight stays and frequent returns.

After they got in, they had to unpack the car, and feed Opal, and then feed themselves, and then play with Opal, and then put away the leftovers, and then clean up, and then. Then, suddenly, there was nothing left to do. They were inside. The fire was lit, the locks were turned, and all they could hear were the cicadas who, like the crops, apparently hadn’t gotten the memo that the summer was over.

Adam was burning with curiosity about the house where Ronan grew up. On their last visit, there hadn’t been time to see more than the fields and the kitchen. (Adam was burning with more than curiosity, admittedly; but neither of the boys was ready to test those waters yet, so early in the evening.)

Ronan was determined to give Adam everything he could possibly want, including the time and space to explore this remnant of Ronan’s past. But he didn’t trust himself to satisfy Adam’s curiosity without getting caught up in the rest of the conflagration. So Ronan made some awkward excuse ( _I’m gonna go take a piss_ ) and disappeared, leaving Adam to examine the house unobserved.

Adam wandered through rooms filled with worn, comfortable furniture. He looked at walls filled with pictures of smiling Lynches, and admired bookshelves crammed with every kind of story that could be imagined: true stories and fairy tales; histories, national and natural; and stories the family wove about itself in pictures and newspaper clippings and grade school art projects and after-school trophies. The house itself was a story, of love and adventure and belonging.

Finally, Adam made his way to Ronan’s room. He stood, breathing the scent of Ronan across time. Adam let his fingers trail gently across the scattering of books and tools and strange objects. He stopped to look more closely at these early examples of Ronan’s insomniac gift for creation.

Adam picked up one object in particular. A car. It was not quite a toy, but not quite a model either. He sat on the edge of Ronan’s bed and idly spun its wheels, wondering if it would play a song from Ronan’s childhood or unfold into a bird or emit fireworks or do something even more unlikely.

The car did none of those things. All it did was highlight the jarring distance between Adam’s childhood Ronan’s. The childhood that had produced this car, this room, this boy that Adam had come to love.

Adam’s face burned with the bitter truth that he didn’t belong here. He was out of place; he came from a place too far from this one to ever work. His own childhood had contained a toy car, too. The car of Adam’s childhood was wrapped up in the misery of memories so ugly that Adam’s mind skittered from them in self-protection.

Adam sat on Ronan’s bed, and tried to let the memories come. He’d learned that turning toward the knowledge of himself always worked out better than shying away from it. The memory he’d been avoiding wasn’t any uglier than the others. It was just another memory of an overheard conversation between his parents, crude and cruel.

Adam was shaking. The memory was corrosive. It tore at the fledgling growth that had taken root over the past months, stripping its green surface until it bled black. Adam tried to staunch the oozing rot before it could completely unmake the new self he had built (was still building) (was trying to build) out of incremental, hard-won shards.

Adam reached inwards for the tools Persephone had taught him. He anchored himself in the physical reality of the present. He was sitting on Ronan’s bed, in Ronan’s room, in Ronan’s house. Ronan, whom he’d always envied. He’d envied Ronan’s ability to swipe his credit card without ever looking at the total. He’d envied Ronan’s easy friendship with Gansey. He’d envied Ronan’s effortless success despite always ditching school. He’d even envied Ronan’s brutal mourning of his father. He’d envied him for having a father whose death he would mourn.

Everything was turned on its head. The boy he’d envied so bitterly had ended up teaching Adam how much power and joy he contained inside himself. The boy whose wealth and success seemed so endless, turned out to want nothing but Adam. 

And now Adam was here, again, in Ronan’s home. And it steadied him. It reversed the growing stream of ichor leaking from his newborn heart, and gave him back his strength. Ronan. It had always been Ronan, Adam knew now. And it would always be Ronan.

Adam was sitting with his left ear toward the door, so he didn’t notice Ronan approaching, until he had walked past him to sit on his other side. His hearing side. Adam smiled to himself at the automatic kindness of the gesture. Ronan would happily be an asshole to Adam’s face, but he was careful to never startle him, and to never ignore his fear.

Adam looked up in surprise as Ronan’s fingers gently covered his own, stopping the ceaseless spinning of the tire. The tire of the car that Adam had forgotten was still in his hands. Ronan was looking down at the car, but his eyes caught on Adam’s lips on their way back up to meet his eyes.

It was strange for Ronan to be here with Adam, in his childhood bedroom, on his childhood bed. It was strange for his childhood car to be in hands that weren’t his. Ronan’s heart felt twisted tight, caught between joy and fear at being so openly revealed to Adam. No one but him had been in this room since before Niall’s death. There was no hiding the Ronan he used to be here. He didn’t know what Adam would think of that ghost-Ronan overlaid on the boy he had become.

Ronan opened his mouth, as if to say something, and then paused. He realized he had no idea what to say. Adam took the gesture as of having another intent altogether; Ronan would later realize this was not necessarily a misunderstanding.

Intentional or not, Ronan found himself being kissed.

His hands instinctively went to cup Adam’s face gently, to hold him fast and kiss him back, deeply. Ronan’s hands slid down from Adam’s face to his shoulders, wringing a involuntary shudder of pleasure as they moved across his cheeks, his jaw, his neck. Ronan brought his lips to the skin of Adam’s throat, one hand still on Adam’s shoulder and the other continuing to move until it rested gently on Adam’s chest.

Adam trembled again, slight and sweet. His hands had come to span the top of Ronan’s back as it came into focus while Ronan’s face moved forward and down to Adam’s neck. Adam’s fingers moved along the inked skin, itching with the need to trace Ronan’s tattoo. A tattoo he’d seen so many times, but never like this.

Ronan obeyed immediately as soon as Adam’s fingers made their desire known by a slight but firm tugging against the cloth of the shirt that obscured the ink. Adam watched, turning feverish, as Ronan’s arms crossed and held and twisted and pulled up. The simple act of Ronan removing his shirt was suddenly a sensual revelation.

Adam’s fingers forgot their purpose, completely waylaid by the new compulsion to trace Ronan’s chest, to circle the dark soft skin of his nipples, to feather lightly down the strong planes of his stomach to the trail of hair that pointed and pulled with a force Adam couldn’t even think of fighting.

Ronan had expected to feel more fear, or maybe shame. At least hesitation. But he felt none of those things. He felt free and he felt right. He felt filled with his feelings, his love, fierce but alight.

Maybe they should stop. Maybe this was too fast a journey. But they didn’t; it wasn’t. They were both so used to holding back, hiding, being blocked: by life, by school, by their own blind stubbornness. They stumbled towards this freedom. It was a strange sensation, like walking off a cliff in a dream. They were already free, but thought they still had to fly to get there.

Ronan tugged Adam gently closer, and pulled him down on top of him as he lay back. Adam’s eyes fluttered closed as Ronan’s fingers made their own voyage of discovery over skin and under cloth. Ronan turned them both so he could lift Adam’s shirt up and over his head, taking care to kiss and lick at every new stretch of skin as it was freed from the tyranny of too many fucking shirts. How many shirts was Adam even fucking wearing? None, now, and that was better.

Adam’s hands came up to frame Ronan’s face, to trace the shapes of his cheeks, still sharp, but more light than blade. Ronan’s hands slipped down, across the expanse of skin and hair to the secret valleys of hips and muscle.

And then there was no more keeping track of who was moving, which one was wanting, how they were holding; they both just were. Every inch of each strained with the ache to touch the other. The car lay forgotten on the floor beside them. They squeezed all distance out between them, then, holding on to one another, desperate and hopeful.

Adam couldn’t name the sensation that was overtaking him. The fires lit by Ronan’s fingers on his skin were a heat that filled and nourished him but didn’t burn. There was a curling and an unfurling and a filling, and yet he felt completely contained and held. The boundaries drawn by Ronan’s hands along his body kept him safely in place. Adam felt known, and the knowing felt like rain.

They shivered and breathed and slid and gasped; they breathed things like “holy jesus mother mary joseph fuck” ( _Ronan_ ) and “please, oh, please, oh, just there” ( _Adam_ ). They bit and shouted and pulled and hissed; they shouted each other’s names like declarations of war ( _Ronan_ ) and proclamations of rights ( _Adam_ ). They smiled and whispered and kissed and held; they whispered each other’s names like prayers ( _Ronan_ ) and wishes ( _Adam_ ).

Adam felt loved, and was amazed to discover he could recognize the feeling without a trace of doubt. He had thought himself unloved, but he had been wrong, and now he knew. He had been loved, and was loved still, with an outsized fierceness and care that was the very definition of Ronan. That love had extended to encompass this, to include touching and feeling and licking and holding and moving. These things were an extension of a feeling, rather a new feeling. They were a sheet settling onto an invisible form; they gave shape to the love, but did not bring that love newly into existence.

Adam didn’t realize yet that Ronan had saved him. His life would have disintegrated as soon as he was free. The sparse materialistic dreams that had fueled his escape wouldn’t sustain the fullness of his soul, once he knew he was going to survive. Being able to swipe his credit card without first looking at the bill would quickly have grown old. That was irresponsibility, not power. He’d never have managed to do it more than once.

He would have withered as soon as school ended.

Maybe he would have made it through college. Maybe even to his first job. But as the daily accumulated knowledge of his safety settled around him, it would have turned from the warm comfort of a quilt to the suffocating weight of chain mail.

None of it would have seemed worth fighting for. None of it would have been enough to blunt the lacerating memories and lingering doubts. None of it would have explained why. Why had he survived? Nothing he thought he was fighting for would have been enough.

Only love.

Love and the enormous outlandish mystery of Ronan.

Ronan and the inescapable enormity of his life; the unlimited splendor of his love for Adam.

That would turn out to have been worth surviving for.

Ronan, for his part, was already aware that Adam had saved him. There were some things Ronan would always understand better than the idiot genius he’d fallen in love with. There were some things Ronan couldn’t help but know. Even when he tried to forget, the scars hiding beneath his leather bracelets would remind him.

Ronan knew that he was less willing every day to move forward with time, as it swept him further away from love, happiness, comfort, safety. Ronan didn’t want to move forward. He wanted to fall backwards. He didn’t care how far he’d have to fall. He didn’t care that he’d never hit bottom. That the past was a gaping maw that could consume without end.

Until he met Adam, he’d had no reason to look outside of that. To think beyond his fury with the future, or his hopeless wish to hold fast to the ghost of a past that could only fester and rot, once the souls that had animated it were dead and gone.

But Adam. Adam had never had anything worth living for, if Ronan’s list of reasons to live was exhaustive. Adam had never had love or happiness or comfort or safety. His past was a desolation. And he’d fought anyway, with steely unyielding determination, to keep moving. He’d scraped and pulled step by excruciating step, until he’d climbed the fuck out of it.

And Ronan was grateful, beyond fucking grateful, that he had. That Adam was such a painstakingly rational stubborn motherfucker. Because life without Adam was not worth living. And, more to the point, life with Adam was. It was. It was.

It was.


	14. Witchcraft Celebrates (epilogue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The realization that Blue and her friends were part of something huger, something vast and stretching and slowly waking..." -BLLB

Depending on where you began the story, it was a story about Blue. The pygmy tyrant who fought against the disparities of height and opportunity and societal gender norms. Or maybe she just ignored them so hard, she could make them invisible to the people around her.

Blue’s centrality was always a little off-center. The only girl in a tight circle of boys. The only public school girl in a tight circle of Aglionby boys. Compact where the boys were unspooling; short where they were tall; self-dressed in crazy creations where they were tight-pressed in anonymous uniforms. Fanciful where they were worldly, detached from the mundane where they were tied.

But that she was the center, there could be little doubt. She was the spoke around which the rest of them turned. Adam’s first crush, Noah’s best friend, Ronan’s only equal, and Gansey’s whatever-she-was to him. His true love, his deepest focus, his unlooked-for but much-needed escape route. His truth.

It was more than that. And less.

The boys were all without fathers. So was Blue. But they were boys, and she was a girl, and so maybe the loss sat differently on her. The boys all had distant mothers. Blue did not. Blue had her own mother, loving and engaged and independent and wise. And she had a houseful of extra mothers, besides.

Depending on which story you tell about Blue, it had always been about being a girl with a mother, surrounded by a sea of boys without fathers.

There were a lot of ways to tell this story; to tell Blue’s story. But the one thing Blue could not abide was being marginalized. So if she was going to be in a story, it sure as fuck better be about her.

It was hard to avoid being marginalized when you were the daughter, niece, cousin etc. of the neighborhood psychics. Blue spent most of high school perfecting the balance between owning her otherness and asserting her sameness. The tension between the two truths of herself was most profound in the cold winter space between the end of one year and the start of the next.

Blue hated all the assumptions people made about her, whether they were right (yes, she did celebrate solstice) or wrong (because she celebrated Christmas too). In fact, Blue’s household celebrated every celebration they could find. Why would anyone turn away a chance to celebrate? 

Blue still sometimes wished her family just did things the way everyone else did. But she tacked this wish down with hairclips; she wrapped the wish in yards of repurposed cloth, until the wish became itself and its opposite at once. That suited her best.

At least this was her last year of dealing with high school and its denizens, all of whom were either offensively offensive or offensively solicitous. This was also the first year that she’d be celebrating solstice with friends who weren’t interested in it as some sort of exotic experiment.

Gansey had been obsessively researching Welsh solstice traditions, sure that they held a clue to the mystery of Glendower. Ronan’s family had always celebrated Celtic traditions alongside Christian ones. Noah self-identified as ghost in a way that would be excruciatingly pretentious in anyone else, but was both solemn and mischievous coming from him. And Adam. Adam had read somewhere that solstice represented the reality of how shitty life was, alongside the stubborn as fuck belief that it could be better. That seemed about right to him.

So Blue and her collection of private school boys were spending this longest night of the year together at the Barns. Blue had been surprised at first that Ronan offered to host, until Adam had pointed out that Ronan could always be counted upon to stay up all night drinking, making noise, and playing with fire. Ronan had just smiled wickedly.

Ronan was, however, a pretty conscientious host. He’d cleared some ground near the river where they could build a bonfire and safely let it burn all night. He’d spent two days shopping and cooking (“fuck off, Gansey, it’s not like I was going to fucking go to class anyway”). He’d marked the trails between the river and the house and set up chains of fairy lights so everyone could find their way. He’d gathered up a mountain of tarps and blankets for everyone to bundle into, and pillows for people who might fall asleep before sunrise (“shut the fuck up, Adam, you know you’re going to fall asleep, why the fuck shouldn’t you have a pillow?”)

It was dark by the time Ronan saw the Pig pull up to the house on the evening of the 21st. This was due in part to the fact that it took a while for Gansey to gather Adam and Noah and Blue and all their shit from their respective homes. It was due in part to the fact that the fucking Pig broke down twice on the drive up. And in was due in large part to the fact that it gets dark pretty fucking early on the longest fucking night of the year.

Noah was happy that it was dark. He had brought an elaborate collection of paper and metal and wood and cloth, that he nimbly assembled into five hand-held lanterns. Each lantern projected different patterns of light and shadow on the ground, so that the shadows danced and shifted as the group processed from the main house to the river. Noah had insisted that they had to make the trip in perfect silence. Blue was grateful for whatever it was about Noah that let him get away with insisting on shit like that, because the lantern walk illuminated a magical path through the silent darkness of the forest.

The solemnity was shed soon after they arrived at the fire pit, already piled high with wood. The group placed their lanterns in a circle, creating a perimeter of light that they could use to organize the heavy bags of food and the crazy stacks of pans and plates and bottles that they’d carried with them.

Noah and Ronan tried to get the fire going, with more noise and mayhem than actual success. Blue, who had actually done this before, and who was determined to avoid any potentially domestic role like setting up food or organizing plates and blankets, took over. She smugly got a roaring fire going in minutes.

Then descended the comfortable semi-silence generated by a group of hungry friends eating good food. Blue finally believed Adam’s tales about Thanksgiving dinner. She’d told Adam that she wasn’t going to accept the idea of Ronan as a cook until she was forced to by irrefutable evidence. She conceded that this meal was indeed irrefutable.

It was a night for acceptance and permission. Blue allowed Gansey to sit right beside her, to lean into her and wrap his arm around her. Blue gave herself permission to watch Adam, too. Something loosened inside her at the sight of him here, in Ronan’s world. Adam existed here with an ease she’d never seen in him before.

Blue had always known Adam to hate dogs; but here he was, petting Opal and letting her steal food off his plate. Blue had always known Adam’s mouth to be held in tight lines of exhaustion, always known his eyes to shutter with the latent will to reject and fight anything that threatened his self-imposed isolation.  But here he was, leaning against Ronan with an easy smile, eyes open and unafraid. Here he was, flirting stupidly in Latin and running his fingers down Ronan’s leg.

She saw Ronan lean in and whisper something into Adam’s right ear that made him laugh around the mouthful of soda he’d just swallowed. Adam punched Ronan in the arm as Ronan fell over cackling while Adam coughed and spluttered. The sheer juvenile idiocy of the scene flooded Blue with an almost painful sense of relief and gratitude and joy. The Adam she had known would never have trusted himself to hit someone, even lightly, even in jest. The Adam she had known was so trapped by his fear of who he might be, he could never let himself just be who he was.

The Adam she had known had shed an astonishing amount of pain and fear in a short time, leaving a boy she still knew but who was also becoming a stranger. Blue was aware of a growing feeling inside her, a kind of urgency; a sense that everything was so much bigger than she’d ever imagined. Blue felt the swelling knowledge of all the potential she held inside herself. She breathed through the anxiety that she would never discover what she was meant to do with it. _We are all so much more than we know,_ she thought. _We are all made so much less by our fears._

The thoughts shook their way through her and she turned. She turned, and grabbed Gansey by the back of his neck and brought him to her and kissed him with all the certainty and passion she’d denied herself with him; with anyone. They had kissed before, but. Never like this. Never with a searing conviction that burned away the edges of everything else. Never in a way that promised _forever_ ; never in a way that said _mine_.

Noah whooped. Adam smiled. Ronan muttered “about fucking time.” Gansey froze.

Gansey froze, for a scant millisecond. And then Gansey fully inhabited the other half of the kiss. Gansey gave himself over to the ascendancy of it. Gansey kissed Blue in a way that said _finally_ and a way that said _forever_ and a way that said _mine._ He kissed her in a way that said _greater even than Glendower._

The moment ended. Blue refused to be embarrassed. She absolutely refused. But her ears betrayed her. Ronan was generally sympathetic to very little, but he was struck somehow by the brotherhood of blushing ears. He grabbed one of the drums he’d brought along (his family had accumulated an eclectic assortment of bodhrans) and began beating out an intricate reel. Noah, that instinctive reader of people, leaped up and grabbed Blue into a wild breathless dance around the fire.

The next few hours passed in a comfortable mix of dancing (mostly Noah and Blue) and talking (mostly Adam and Gansey) and drumming (mostly Ronan; the rest of them sucked at it) and eating (everyone pulled their weight on that one). The darkness pulled itself down from the heavens and drew closer around them. They drew closer to one another, and moved closer to the fire. They wrapped themselves and each other in blankets and bodies and pillows.

Noah was the first to fall asleep. He’d never planned to stay up the whole night, and he trusted that either someone would wake him for the sunrise, or they would all sleep through it together. Blue and Gansey huddled together, kissing and talking and letting the darkness build them a silent world of their own.

Adam, who had not yet relinquished the need to be helpful whenever anyone did something kind for him, moved around the campsite cleaning and organizing. Until Ronan couldn’t take it anymore. Ronan couldn’t take the separation; but more, he couldn’t take Adam’s blindness to his own worthiness.

Ronan gave up on waiting for Adam to _just stop_ , and resorted to unfairly distracting him with his lips and fingers and breath. Adam finally gave up on justifying his existence and followed Ronan back to the tumbled pile of blankets where Opal was already snoring. Adam let Ronan convince him that, at least for one person on this barren earth, Adam was everything. Adam let Ronan demonstrate, with touch and breath and fervent movement, the extent and nature of his worship.

In the end, Ronan and Gansey, the veteran insomniacs, were the only ones who stayed awake all night. They talked quietly and fed the fire and moved back and forth through times and selves. They were Ronan and Gansey from freshman year; intact but strange. They were Ronan and Gansey from sophomore year; more open about the things that haunted them, but still wrapped in the protective film of lingering childhood. They were Ronan and Gansey from junior year; ripped open and raw and uncertain and afraid. They were Ronan and Gansey from this year; learning how to re-sheathe themselves in self-made layers of protection, woven from friendship and love and slow acceptance of the tragedy of time. They were the Ronan and Gansey of the future, experimenting with versions of selves they might come to inhabit.

They sat with their backs to the river. Ronan’s fingers moved gently through Adam’s hair, where it fell from Adam’s sleeping head as it rested along Ronan’s leg and side. Gansey’s hand sat warmly on Blue’s back, where it rose and fell with her breath in sleep.

Finally, the darkness began to lift. Ronan and Gansey readied themselves to shift back from the bit of the world that contained only the two of them, to the bigger world they were building with the friends they loved.

Adam, ever vigilant to change in the moods and movements of the people around him, came fully awake in an instant. Ronan got tired of Gansey’s gentle attempts to wake Blue, and leaned over to yell something rude in her ear. He was saved from what would have been a bloody retaliation by Adam’s ripping the cover off her shoulders, a successful tactic that left plenty of space between him and the unpleasant fire of grumpy, early-morning Blue. Then all four of them threw things at Noah’s head until he woke up too.

They let Opal sleep. None of them were certain enough of the potential canine interest in the dance of heavenly bodies and its effect on the humans who swirled helplessly through space, pinned to the surface of this planet that had tilted so far from its sun.

As the sky lightened and the first clear fingers of approaching sun reached down to enfold them, Blue found herself dead center in the circle of her friends.

She felt the day begin. She felt the shift and tumble of the season toward the inevitable coming of spring. She felt the possibilities, of who she was and who she might become, wake and stretch around her.

The sun reached for the five of them, and they reached for each other.

They felt the sudden solid knowledge that they were all part of something big, something vast, something that was just beginning. They held inside themselves the possibility that this enormous newborn thing was nothing more and nothing less than just them, themselves; the five of them, and the connections they were weaving around and between them.

The day began, and they were whole.


End file.
